AN edition of Dr. Bentley's Correspondence was originally designed by his Right Reverend and Learned Biographer, the Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol. His Lordship, having been led by the claims of his important avocations to relinquish that undertaking, with great kindness and liberality transferred the documents, which he had collected for it, to the hands of the Reverend John Wordsworth, M.A., late Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, who was engaged in carrying on the work with much assiduity, when he was taken away by an early death.

The present Editor, on whom, by a concurrence of circumstances, the duty of executing the above design has devolved, has attempted, he fears very imperfectly, to accomplish what his predecessors in it were so well qualified to perform.

He now proceeds to state the plan of this publication, and the materials of which it is composed; requesting permission to close this Preface with a brief Memoir of him whom he has immediately succeeded in this work, a brother made dearer to him by a similarity of pursuits at the same school, and at the same College, as well as at the same home.

The present volumes are designed to contain the whole of Dr. Bentley's extant Correspondence, with the exception of such letters as were published in his lifetime.

Charles Burney was born at Shrewsbury, on the twelfth of April, 1726.

He was issue of a second marriage, of a very different colour with respect to discretion, or to prejudice, from that with the account of which he has opened his own narration. The poor actress was no more; but neither her hardly judged, though enthusiastically admired profession, nor her numerous offspring, nor the alienation she had unhappily caused in the family, proved obstacles to the subsequent union of her survivor with Miss * * * who in those days, though young and pretty, was called Mrs. Ann Cooper, a Shropshire young lady, of bright parts and great personal beauty; as well as an inheritress of a fortune which, for the times, was by no means inconsiderable. The parchments of the marriage settlement upon this occasion are still remaining amongst the few family records that Dr. Burney preserved.

Whether attracted by her beauty, her sprightliness, or her portion; or by the aggregate influence of those three mighty magnetizers of the passions of man, is not known; but Wycherley, the famous poet, fine gentleman, and Wit of the reign of Charles the Second, had been so enamoured with Mrs. Ann Cooper in her earliest youth, which flourished in his latest decadency, that he sought her for his bride.

Such, as far as can be gathered, or recollected, was the list of the general home circle of Dr. Burney, on his beginning residence in St. Martin's-street; though many persons must be omitted, not to swell voluminously a mere catalogue of names, where no comment, or memorandum of incident, has been left of them by the Doctor.

But to enumerate the friends or acquaintances with whom he associated in the world at large, would be nearly to ransack the Court Calendar, the list of the Royal Society, of the Literary Club, of all assemblages of eminent artists; and almost every other list that includes the celebrated or active characters, then moving, like himself, in the vortex of public existence.

Chiefly, however, after those already named, stood, in his estimation, Mr. Chamier, Mr. Boone, Dr. Warton, and his brother, Dr. Thomas Warton, Sir Richard Jebb, Mr. Matthias, Mr. Cox, Dr. Lind, and Mr. Planta, of the Museum.

OMIAH.

At the end of the year 1775, the Doctor's eldest son, Captain James Burney, who, on board the Cerberus, had convoyed General Burgoyne to America, obtained permission from the Admiralty to return home, in order to again accompany Captain Cooke in a voyage round the world; the second circumnavigation of the young Captain; the third, and unhappily the last, of the great Captain Cooke.

Omiah, whom they were to restore to his country and friends, came now upon a leave-taking visit to the family of his favourite Captain Burney.

If the life of a humble individual, on whom neither splendid appointments, important transactions, nor atrocious crimes have called the attention of the public, can afford amusement to the friends he leaves behind, without being offered either as a model to follow, or a precipice to shun, the intention of the writer of these Memoirs will be fully accomplished. But there is no member of society who, by diligence, talents, or conduct, leaves his name and his race a little better than those from which he sprung, who is totally without some claim to attention on the means by which such advantages were achieved.

My life, though it has been frequently a tissue of toil, sickness, and sorrow, has yet been, upon the whole, so much more pleasant and prosperous than I had a title to expect, or than many others with higher claims have enjoyed, that its incidents, when related, may, perhaps, help to put mediocrity in good-humour, and to repress the pride and over-rated worth and expectations of indolence.

Perhaps few have been better enabled to describe, from an actual survey, the manners and customs of the age in which he lived than myself; ascending from those of the most humble cottagers, and lowest mechanics, to the first nobility, and most elevated personages, with whom circumstances, situation, and accident, at different periods of my life, have rendered me familiar.