listening ear, and will not despise

"_The short and simple annals of the Poor_."

Very few words will complete what remains to be added.

Struck with the Work, but not less struck with the remark, which is become
a proverb, of the Roman Satirist, that "_it is not easy_
[Footnote:
Haud facile emergunt quorum virtutibus obstat
Res angusta domi.]
for those to emerge to notice whose circumstances obscure the observation
of their Merits," I sent it to a Friend,[Footnote: This Friend, THOMAS
HILL, Esq. I hope will forgive my mentioning him without asking his
consent.] whom I knew to be above these prejudices: and who has deserv'd,
and is deserving, well of the public, in many other instances, by his
attention to Literature and the elegant Arts. He immediately express'd an
high satisfaction in it; and communicated it to the Publishers. They
adopted it upon terms honorable to themselves, and satisfactory to the
Author, and to me in his behalf. They have publish'd it in a manner which
speaks abundantly for itself; both as to the typographical accuracy and
beauty, and the good taste and execution of the Ornaments in Wood.

My part has been this, and it has been a very pleasing one: to revise the
MS. making occasionally corrections with respect to Orthography, and
sometimes in the grammatical construction. The corrections, in point of
Grammar, reduce themselves almost wholly to a circumstance of provincial
usage, which even well educated persons in _Suffolk_ and _Norfolk_ do not
wholly avoid; and which may be said, as to general custom, to have become
in these Counties almost an established Dialect:... that of adopting the