PREFACE.
This volume consists of a reproduction, on slightly reduced scale, but with no impairment of their effect and truth, of the eighty-one Portraits and Groups originally published in Fraser's Magazine, 1830-38, under the title of "A Gallery of Illustrious Literary Characters." To these, four portraits,[1] not forming part of the original series, have been added, for the sake of completeness; and the whole, it is hoped, will be found to derive elucidation and value from the copious illustrative "Memoirs," for which I am responsible.
It is well to record, in the interests of bibliography, that there has been a previous republication, both in part and in entirety, of this interesting series. So far back as 1833, the portraits of which the "Gallery" then consisted, to the number of thirty-four, were reissued by the proprietors in a handsome quarto volume. A very limited number of the edition was printed at two guineas each, "plain proofs"; with twenty-four copies on "Indian paper," at three guineas. The publication was announced with the statement that "the Drawings were destroyed immediately after their first appearance, and not one had been suffered to get abroad detached from the Magazine." However this may have been, the collection, good as far as it went, contained little more than a third of the entire series as given in this volume; it was unaccompanied by explanatory text; and has become, from its restricted issue, and the destruction of numerous copies by the "Grangerites" of the day, in booksellers' lingo, "difficult of procuration."
In 1874, the complete "Gallery" was, for the first time, repub-
- ↑ Henry Hallam; W. M. Thackeray; Daniel Maclise, R.A.; and the Rev. Francis Mahony ("Father Prout").
