different minds, this must be still more emphatically the case with
things long since past and half-forgotten. Again and again, when
historical investigation has refused to afford me the means of
resuscitating some remotely ancient scene, I have been obliged to take
counsel of imagination and remember the saying that 'the Poet must be a
retrospective Seer,' and could allow my fancy to spread her wings, while
I remained her lord and knew the limits up to which I might permit her
to soar. I considered it my lawful privilege to paint much that was
pure invention, but nothing that was not possible at the period I was
representing. A due regard for such possibility has always set the
bounds to fancy's flight; wherever existing authorities have allowed
me to be exact and faithful I have always been so, and the most
distinguished of my fellow-professors in Germany, England, France and
Holland, have more than once borne witness to this. But, as I need
hardly point out, poetical and historical truth are not the same thing;
for historical truth must remain, as far as possible, unbiassed by the
subjective feeling of the writer, while poetical truth can only find
expression through the medium of the artist's fancy.

As in my last two romances, so in "The Emperor," I have added no notes:
I do this in the pleasant conviction of having won the confidence of my
readers by my historical and other labors. Nothing has encouraged me to
fresh imaginative works so much as the fact that through these romances
the branch of learning that I profess has enlisted many disciples whose
names are now mentioned with respect among Egyptologists. Every one who
is familiar with the history of Hadrian's time will easily discern by
trifling traits from what author or from which inscription or monument
the minor details have been derived, and I do not care to interrupt the
course of the narrative and so spoil the pleasure of the larger class
of readers. It would be a happiness to me to believe that this tale
deserves to be called a real work of art, and, as such, its first
function should be to charm and elevate the mind. Those who at the same
time enrich their knowledge by its study ought not to detect the fact
that they are learning.

Those who are learned in the history of Alexandria under the Romans may
wonder that I should have made no mention of the Therapeutai on Lake
Mareotis. I had originally meant to devote a chapter to them, but Luca's
recent i