The cover image has been created for this e-text and is placed in the public domain. In the Possession of Miss Edgeworth, presented to her by a Lady. The only prospectus of the Table Book was the eight versified lines on the title-page. So long as I am enabled, and the public continue to be pleased, the Table Book will be continued.
The kind reception of the weekly numbers, and the monthly parts, encourages me to hope that like favour will be extended to the half-yearly volume. The engraving will not be questioned as a decoration, and it has some claim to be regarded as an elegant illustration of a miscellany which draws largely on art and literature, and on nature itself, towards its supply.
I take great pleasure also in images; they come in show more near unto nature than pictures, for they do but appear; but these are felt to be substantial, and their bodies are more durable. Amongst the Grecians the art of painting was esteemed above all handycrafts, and the chief of all the liberal arts.
How great the dignity hath been of statues; and how fervently the study and desire of men have reposed in such pleasures, emperors and kings, and other noble personages, nay, even persons of inferior degree, have shown, in their industrious keeping of them when obtained. Many of them doubtless know him intimately. Should any of them want an introduction to him, how should we speak of him in the gross?
Who she was, or why their connection was not closer, remains a mystery. But that she was a real person, and that in spite of all her modesty she did not show an insensible countenance to his passion, is clear from his long-haunted imagination, from his own repeated accounts, from all that he wrote, uttered, and thought.
