Excerpt from Night Thoughts on Life, Death, and Immortality: And, a Paraphrase on Part of the Book of Job To the principal poem in this volume a work which has won for its author an imperishable fame - I have given the simple title of the Night Thoughts. The prefix which it usually bears, is The Complaint. But this inappropriate epithet was adopted in consequence of the peculiar mode in which the work made its appearance. Each Night was published, at intervals of several months, as a complete pamphlet, in royal quarto, stitched in blue paper covers; and embellished with a fine view of Welwyn churchyard, where the author is seen pursuing his noctur nal studies under the influences of a bright moon and a serene sky. All of them had a distinct title in addition to the Night Thoughts, except the Second, which had merely, Night the Second, on Time, Death, Friendship. As the Second had no special title, Dodsley, who was a more successful bookseller than poet, made The Com plaint serve as its general title, as it had done for that of the First Night. The work having early assumed a desultory and uncertain character, as will afterwards be shown, the publisher was induced to prefix the same gene ral but incongruous title to the subsequent pamphlets, for the purpose of securing uniformity. But by this act he perpetrated a sad anomaly; as will be seen by a perusal of the titles of the other Nights, which were severally, N arcissa, The Christian Triumph, The Relapse. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.