Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: time to time to her particular friends, did not regard it as of sufficient importance for publication; and, except for an accident, it might have been cut up for dress patterns, or served to light fires.1 This fortunate accident was its exhibition in 1814 to Upcott; and Lady Evelyn subsequently, after much solicitation from many persons, consented to its being printed under the auspices of Bray, who, in his Preface, renders special thanks to Upcott for the great and material assistance received from him . . . besides his attention to the superintendence of the Press. Why Upcott, to whom the MS. was communicated without reserve by Lady Evelyn, and who edited Evelyn's Miscellaneous Writings in 1825, did not also edit the Diary, does not appear; but?as we shall see ?it continued to engage his attention even after Bray's death in 1832. The first edition of Evelyn's Memoirs was well received, ?Southey, in particular, vouchsafing to it a long and sympathetic notice in the Quarterly for April, 1818. In 1819 appeared a second quarto edition. Eight years later, in 1827, this was followed by a five-volume octavo edition, which has often been reprinted, notably in 1879, by Messrs. Bickers and Bush, with a careful Life of Evelyn by Mr. Henry B. Wheatley, F.S.A.2 In 1 Preface to Frederick Strong's Catalogue, quoted in Dews' Deptford, 2nd edition, 1884, p. 211. 2 A reissue of this is now (June, 1906) in course of publication. chapter{{Section 4Messrs. Bickers and Bush's Preface it is expressly stated that, after several applications to the owner of the MS., Mr. W. J. Evelyn of Wotton, for permission to consult it, that gentleman eventually replied that Colburn's third edition of the Diary was very correctly printed from the MS., and might be relied on as giving ...