hout apprehension that my eagerness to freshen a jaded mind by
diverting it to the healthy natures of a grand epoch, may have operated
unfavourably on the represented play, which is one of Action in
Character, rather than Character in Action. To remedy this, in some
degree, considerable curtailment will be necessary, and, in a few
instances, the supplying details not required, I suppose, by the mere
reader. While a trifling success would much gratify, failure will not
wholly discourage me from another effort: experience is to come, and
earnest endeavour may yet remove many disadvantages.

The portraits are, I think, faithful; and I am exceedingly fortunate in
being able, in proof of this, to refer to the subtle and eloquent
exposition of the characters of Eliot and Strafford, in the Lives of
Eminent British Statesmen now in the course of publication in Lardner's
Cyclopaedia, by a writer [John Forster] whom I am proud to call my
friend; and whose biographies of Hampden, Pym, and Vane, will, I am
sure, fitly illustrate the present year--the Second Centenary of the
Trial concerning Ship-money. My Carlisle, however, is purely imaginary:
I at first sketched her singular likeness roughly in, as suggested by
Matthew and the memoir-writers--but it was too artificial, and the
substituted outline is exclusively from Voiture and Waller.

The Italian boat-song in the last scene is from Redi's _Bacco_, long
since naturalised in the joyous and delicate version of Leigh Hunt."

3. Preface to _Sordello_ (not in first edition, but added in 1863). I
reprint it, though still retained by the author, on account of its great
importance as a piece of self-criticism or self-interpretation.

"To J. MILSAND, OF DIJON.

Dear Friend,--Let the next poem be introduced by your name, and so repay
all trouble it ever cost me. I wrote it twenty-five years ago for only a
few, counting even in these on somewhat more care about its subject than
they really had. My own faults of expression were many; but with care
for a man or book, such would be surmounted, and without it what avails
the faultlessness of either? I blame nobody, least of all myself, who
did my best then and since; for I lately gave time and pains to turn my
work into what the many might,--instead of what the few must,--like: but
after all, I imagined another thing at first, and therefore leave as I
find it. The historical decoration was purposely of no more importance
than a backgroun