thers, and it is another to
invest them with the sentiments and dialect exclusively proper to their
descendants.

This, my dear friend, I have found the most difficult part of my task;
and, to speak frankly, I hardly expect to satisfy your less partial
judgment, and more extensive knowledge of such subjects, since I have
hardly been able to please my own.

I am conscious that I shall be found still more faulty in the tone of
keeping and costume, by those who may be disposed rigidly to examine
my Tale, with reference to the manners of the exact period in which my
actors flourished: It may be, that I have introduced little which can
positively be termed modern; but, on the other hand, it is extremely
probable that I may have confused the manners of two or three centuries,
and introduced, during the reign of Richard the First, circumstances
appropriated to a period either considerably earlier, or a good deal
later than that era. It is my comfort, that errors of this kind will
escape the general class of readers, and that I may share in the
ill-deserved applause of those architects, who, in their modern Gothic,
do not hesitate to introduce, without rule or method, ornaments proper
to different styles and to different periods of the art. Those
whose extensive researches have given them the means of judging my
backslidings with more severity, will probably be lenient in proportion
to their knowledge of the difficulty of my task. My honest and neglected
friend, Ingulphus, has furnished me with many a valuable hint; but the
light afforded by the Monk of Croydon, and Geoffrey de Vinsauff, is
dimmed by such a conglomeration of uninteresting and unintelligible
matter, that we gladly fly for relief to the delightful pages of the
gallant Froissart, although he flourished at a period so much more
remote from the date of my history. If, therefore, my dear friend, you
have generosity enough to pardon the presumptuous attempt, to frame for
myself a minstrel coronet, partly out of the pearls of pure antiquity,
and partly from the Bristol stones and paste, with which I have
endeavoured to imitate them, I am convinced your opinion of the
difficulty of the task will reconcile you to the imperfect manner of its
execution.

Of my materials I have but little to say. They may be chiefly found in
the singular Anglo-Norman MS., which Sir Arthur Wardour preserves with
such jealous care in the third drawer of his oaken cabinet, scarcely
allowin