Vol. I.
NEW YORK
HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE
1883
Copyright, 1883, by George Ticknor Curtis.
All rights reserved.
Stereotyped by Smith & McDougal.
PREFACE.
Notwithstanding the proverbial tendency of biographers to contract what Macaulay has called “the disease of admiration,” no one who can lay claim to any strength of mind need allow the fear of such an imputation to prevent him from doing justice to a public man whose life, for whatever reason, he has undertaken to write. But that my readers may judge of the degree of my exposure to this malady, a frank explanation of the circumstances under which I came to write this work is due both to them and to myself.