Excerpt from Biographical and Critical Miscellanies The subject of the present memoir affords an almost solitary example, at this period, of a. Scholar, in the enlarged ap lication of the term, who cultivated letters as a distinct and exclusive profession, resting his means of support, as well as his fame, on h1s success; and who, as a writer of fiction, is still farther entitled to credit for having quitted the beaten grounds of the Old Country, and sought his subjects in the untried wilderness of his own. The particulars of his unostentatious life have been collected with suffi cient industry by his friend, Mr. William Dunlap, to whom our native literature is under such large obligations for the extent and fidelity of his re searches. We will select a few of the most prom inent incidents from a mass of miscellaneous fragments and literary lumber with which his work is somewhat encumbered. It were to be wished that, in the place of some of them, more cupious extracts had been substituted for his journal and correspondence, which, doubtless, in this as in other cases, must afford the most interesting, as well as an thcntic materials for biography. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

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Reprint of the original, first published in 1859.