THE COLLECTED EDITION OF TEN VOLUMES,
PREFACE
by a note to the editor, requesting the insertion of the “ following attempts of a yonthful
muse;" and the fear and trembling with which THE FIRST VOLUME.
I ventured upon this step were agreeably dis
pelled, not only by the appearance of the conFinding it to be the wish of my Publishers tributions, but still more by my finding myself, that at least the earlier volumes of this col- a few months after, hailed as “Our esteemed lection should each be accompanied by some correspondent, T. M.” prefatory matter, illustrating, by a few bio It was in the pages of this publication, graphical memoranda, the progress of my where the whole of the poem was extracted, bumble literary career, I have consented, that I first met with the Pleasures of Memory; though not, I confess, without some scruple and to this day, when I open the volume of and hesitation, to comply with their request. the Anthologia which contains it, the very Lo
no country is there so much curiosity felt form of the type and color of the paper brings respecting the interior of the lives of public back vividly to my mind the delight with which men as in England; but, on the other hand, I first read that poem. in no country is he who ventures to tell his own My schoolmaster, Mr. Whyte, though amustory so little safe from the imputation of van- singly vain, was a good and kind-hearted man; ity and self-display.
and, as a teacher of public reading and elocuThe whole or the poems contained in the tion, had long enjoyed considerable reputafirst, as well as in the greater part of the tion. Nearly thirty years before I became his secon’ volume of this collection were written pupil, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, then about between the sixteenth and the twenty-third eight or nine years of age, had been placed by year of the author's age. But I had begun Mrs. Sheridan under his care ;* and, strange still earlier, not only to rhyme but to publish. to say, was, after about a year's trial, proA sonnet to my schoolmaster, Mr. Samuel nounced, both by tutor and parent, to be Whyte, written in my fourteenth year, ap- incorrigible dunce.” Among those who took peared at the time in a Dublin magazine, lessons from him as private pupils were several called the Anthologii,--the first, and, I fear, young ladies of rank, belonging to some of almost only, creditable attempt in periodical those great Irish families who still continued to literature of which Ireland has to boast. I had lend to Ireland the enlivening influence of eren at an earlier period (1793) sent to this their presence, and made their country-seats, magazine two short pieces of verse, prefaced through a great part of the year, the scenes of
* Some confused notion of this fact has led the writer of a tutor!"Great attention was paid to his education iy his Mennir prehxed to the “Pocket Edition" of my Poems, ) tutor, Sheridan." printed at Zwickau, to state that Brinsley Sheridan was my