EXTRACTS FROM THE LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC CORRESPONDENCE OF RICHARD RICHARDSON, M.D., F.R S., OF BIERLEY, YORKSHIRE; ILLUSTRATIVE OF THE STATE AND PROGRESS OF BOTANY, AND INTERSPERSED WITH INFORMATION RESPECTING THE STUDY OF ANTIQUITIES AND GENERAL LITERATURE, IN GREAT BRITAIN, DURING THE FIRST HALF OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. "Whatever can in any manner sustain or amplify the character of great departed writers, either as men of virtue, or of ability, or of learning, in their specific or in their varied modes of excellence, may surely be offered to the world, with propriety and mutual advantage."—Mathias on Gray. YARMOUTH: PRINTED BY CHARLES SLOMAN, KING-STREET. MDCCC XXXV. 782. PREFACE. Of the Letters contained in the following Extracts from the Correspondence of Dr. Richardson, a considerable number has already been given to the public, in Mr. Nichols' Illustrations of the Literary History of the Eighteenth Century,1 and in Sir James Smith's Selection from the Correspondence of Linnæus. Three others will be found in Lhwyd's Lithophylacium Britannicum, and two more in Thoresby's Correspondence. Were the portion, however, already published even greater than it is, the value of the present volume would scarcely be diminished by such anticipations. My late excellent friend, the founder and president of the Linnæan Society, has confined himself to the productions of Dillenius, Petiver, and Gronovius-communications almost altogether botanical, and, as such, alone adapted to the publication in which it was intended they should appear;-while the Historian of 1 I. p. 259-417; and p. 793-816-II. p. 356-364. Leicestershire, at the same time that he has taken a wider range, has been scarcely less exclusive; inasmuch as he has rejected most of the documents relating to Natural History, a subject with which he was himself unacquainted. Nor has either of these authors followed the same plan which I have done, or proposed to himself the same object; but both the one and the other have, to my eyes at least, deprived these papers of a material part of their interest, as well by the mode of arrangement they have adopted, as by their want of selection. They have in every instance placed the whole of the letters from each individual in a distinct series; and from the individuals thus favoured they have not rejected one letter, however deficient in matter of curiosity or information. Hence the reader is liable to be repelled at the outset, by being obliged to labour through much that could only be interesting, or perhaps only intelligible, to the party to whom it was addressed; and hence, also, it is impossible he should form any general idea of the contents of the whole collection, taken in an aggregate, or should derive from it the knowledge it is calculated to afford. I have felt, therefore, that the mere circumstances of partial exclusion and of different juxta-position would give the contents of this volume a new character; to which it lays still further claim, from the quantity of original matter it contains, as well as from the notes with which it is copiously illustrated. The unpublished letters are taken either from the Richardson Correspondence itself, now in the possession |