Abstract:
About the time that a Monument to Mr. Granville
Sharp's memory was erected in Westminster Abbey by
the African Institution, it was understood to be the
intention of that body to publish an account of the
services which he had rendered to the cause of African
freedom. This intention being communicated to Mr.
Sharp's family; they were desirous of enlarging the
proposal so far as to include a memorial of his whole
life; and the plan being determined, the task of performing
it was assigned to an intimate friend, . Whose
abilities and professional character' rendered him eminently
suited to the undertaking. ‘The pressure of
other occupations induced him after a time to relinquish
it; and I received a request from the Executrix
that I would take the charge on myself. Obligations
of gratitude to the Family precluded refusal on my
part; and my high respect for the Person whose life
was to be the subject of the Memoirs, made me accede
cheerfully to the proposal: . But in giving my consent,
I did not form an adequate idea of the task in which
I was about to engage. The most voluminous and
diffuse documents were consigned to my care~ from
which I had to extract whatever might be thought
useful to the public, and (what was far more difficult)
in which I was to discover and trace a connected thread
of Mr. Sharp's progressive actions through his long
and important life.
That such a task would be tedious, it was easy to
anticipate. But it has been further. Protracted by
causes which could not he foreseen,-by the suffering
of repeated illness since the period when I first printed
my Prospectus-of illness aggravated not unfrequently
by an apprehension that, as the real cause of the delay
could be known only to a few, I might suffer no slight
imputation, of neglect in the performance of what I had undertaken.
