さ CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE, London: FETTER LANE, E.C. Leipzig: F. A. BROCKHAUS. New York: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. [All Rights reserved] IN NOTE. N 1718 a folio edition of Prior's poems was published by subscription, containing all the poems previously issued by him which he wished to acknowledge and preserve, carefully revised, and accompanied by others then printed for the first time. This folio was issued in three sizes. It will be remembered that a passage in Prior's will runs thus: To the College of St. John the Evangelist, in Cambridge, I leave Such and so many of my Books, as shall be judged to amount unto the Value of Two Hundred Pounds: These Books, with my own Poems in the greatest Paper, to be kept in the Library, together with the Books which I have already given.' Of these eighteenth-century examples of large-paper issues Mr Austin Dobson remarks, 'with the small copy of 1718, Johnson might have knocked down Osborne the bookseller; with the same work in its tallest form....Osborne the bookseller might have laid prostrate the "Great Lexicographer" himself.' Those who have seen the 'greatest' copy will not doubt the truth of this statement. Desirous of being suitably equipped in this 'Battle of the Books,' I have used a medium copy as the basis of the present text, a copy measuring 163 ins. × 10 ins. Even this is a handsome folio, with engraved initial letters, head-pieces and tail-pieces, of the usual mythological nature. 'The Names of the Subscribers' who received the volume in |