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LONDON:

Printed by WILLIAM CLOWES and SONS, Stamford Street.

PREFACE.

Most of the following trifles were written in the carriage, and served to beguile the tedium of many a long day spent in my professional pursuits. The resource was suggested in a conversation with the late Lord Grenville, who, after having been occupied incessantly in politics for nearly thirty years, was seized by illness, and confined to his arm-chair a great part of the remainder of his life. In this state I always found him not tranquil and cheerful only, as I might have expected from his habitual piety, but amused; and on my asking him the secret of this happy peculiarity, he answered, " I go back to my classics, Sir." The next day he sent me a copy of His "Nugæ Metricæ," printed, but not published, containing original exercises and translations, which bespeak a happy facility of composition, and a correct taste. I thought

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I could not do better than imitate such an example,

and provide myself with a similar resource, connected with reminiscences of these early delightful studies, whenever my own power of further exertion should be terminated by age, or interrupted by such disease as might leave me in possession of my faculties.

H. H.

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