PREFACE.
I have been asked by the publishers to collect all that is reasonably possible respecting the personal and literary career of Thomas Griffiths Wainewright, an acquaintance of Charles Lamb, of my grandfather, and of many other individuals of note, belonging to that set and that period—the original of Bulwer Lytton's Varney, and the husband of that author's Lucretia Clavering.
Wainewright, I find, is not much mentioned by his contemporaries and by those who came immediately after him. Far less are his name, his character, and his melodramatic history recollected to-day.
I have examined a large assemblage of diaries, autobiographies, and correspondence of the time, in the hope of obtaining information or clues, but I have not been quite so successful as I anticipated, looking at the social position which Wainewright occupied during several years, and his friendly intercourse with so many men of letters.
