ΤΟ

THE RIGHT HONOURABLE

AND

RIGHT REVEREND

BEILBY PORTEUS, D. D.

LORD BISHOP OF LONDON,

ONE OF HIS MAJESTY'S MOST HONOURABLE PRIVY COUNCIL,

&c. &c. &c.

MY LORD,

As soon as I formed the re

solution of attempting to write the Life of Dr Beattie, I determined to request permission to inscribe it to your Lordship; because I well know the high value he justly

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set on your friendship, and how much it would have gratified him to think, that his name should be joined with that of the Bishop of London.

Your Lordship well knew Dr Beattie's merit as a Philosopher and a Poet, and his worth as a Man and a Christian. If in this attempt, therefore, to delineate his character, I am so fortunate as to gain, in any degree, your approbation, I shall look upon my work with no ordinary degree of complacence.

I embrace, with the greatest satisfaction, and with peculiar propriety, this opportunity of expressing my respect for you;

as it was to Dr Beattie's kind partiality

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that I owed my first introduction to your Lordship, and the beginning of that friendship with which you have ever since been