[Footnote 1: Coleridge, “Aids to Reflection.”]
Although perhaps no biographical sketch was ever executed, as a labour of love, without an occasional attack of what Lord Macaulay calls the Lues Boswelliana or fever of admiration, I hope it is unnecessary for me to say that I am not setting up Mrs. Piozzi as a model letter-writer, or an eminent author, or a pattern of the domestic virtues, or a fitting object of hero or heroine worship in any capacity. All I venture to maintain is, that her life and character, if only for the sake of the “associate forms,” deserve to be vindicated against unjust reproach, and that she has written many things which are worth snatching from oblivion or preserving from decay.
END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.
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