Dedication and Preface of the Florence Miscellany AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS. "THE circumstances," says Sir James Fellowes," under which she was induced to write them, were purely accidental. During the last fifty years of her life, she had made a collection of pocket-books, in which it was her constant practice to write down her conversations and anecdotes, as well as her remarks upon the recent publications. They were tied together and carefully preserved; and on one occasion Mrs. Piozzi, pointing to them, observed to me: These you will one day have to look over with Salusbury (my co-executor), together with the Thraliana;' I have never had courage to open them, but to your honour and joint care I shall leave them.' These memoranda would no doubt form a literary curiosity. At the time the conversation took place at Bath on this interesting topic, I urged Mrs. Piozzi to write down some reminiscences of her own times, and some of those amusing anecdotes I had heard her relate, and which had never been published, adding to my request, the value they would be to posterity and the obligation conferred upon myself. It |