OR CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS FOURTH EDITION TO WHICH ARE ADDED FREE THOUGHTS ON PUBLIC AFFAIRS AND A BY WILLIAM HAZLITT EDITED BY W. CAREW HAZLITT. LONDON: GEORGE BELL AND SONS YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN 1886 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURE DAVIS PREFACE. HE first edition of the SPIRIT OF THE AGE in book THE form appeared in an octavo volume of pp. 424 in 1825. The contents had been partly communicated as separate articles to the New Monthly Magazine. A second edition, making only pp. 408, and printed in smaller size and type, came out in the same year. The Characters were differently arranged; an addition to that of Coleridge was made; a new one on Cobbett was first introduced; and a few errors of the press were corrected. In 1858, the author's son produced a third impression, with a criticism on Canning incorporated. I have in my possession portions of the original autograph of this interesting work, and I have collated. them, so far as they go; but the MS., while it rectifies a few mistakes here and there, exhibits (I suspect), on the whole, readings deliberately rejected by the author himself in proof. On the other hand, from a copy of the second issue of 1825, belonging to Mr. C. W. Reynell, a few verbal changes in Hazlitt's own hand have been introduced. "When I told Jeffrey," says Hazlitt, "that I had composed a work, in which I had in some sort handled 42350 |