arest approach
which the Author could make to a more important work suggested to him from
a high ecclesiastical quarter.

_September 13, 1855._

POSTSCRIPTS TO LATER EDITIONS.

_February 8, 1856._--Since the volume has been in print, the Author finds
that his name has got abroad. This gives him reason to add, that he wrote
great part of Chapters I., IV., and V., and sketched the character and
fortunes of Juba, in the early spring of 1848. He did no more till the end
of last July, when he suddenly resumed the thread of his tale, and has
been successful so far as this, that he has brought it to an end.

Without being able to lay his finger upon instances in point, he has some
misgiving lest, from a confusion between ancient histories and modern
travels, there should be inaccuracies, antiquarian or geographical, in
certain of his minor statements, which carry with them authority when they
cease to be anonymous.

_February 2, 1881.--October, 1888._--In a tale such as this, which professes
in the very first sentence of its Advertisement to be simple fiction from
beginning to end, details may be allowably filled up by the writer's
imagination and coloured by his personal opinions and beliefs, the only
rule binding on him being this--that he has no right to contravene
acknowledged historical facts. Thus it is that Walter Scott exercises a
poet's licence in drawing his Queen Elizabeth and his Claverhouse, and the
author of "Romola" has no misgivings in even imputing hypothetical motives
and intentions to Savonarola. Who, again, would quarrel with Mr. Lockhart,
writing in Scotland, for excluding Pope, or Bishops, or sacrificial rites
from his interesting Tale of Valerius?

Such was the understanding, as to what I might do and what I might not,
with which I wrote this story; and to make it clearer, I added in the
later editions of this Advertisement, that it was written "from a Catholic
point of view;" while in the earlier, bearing in mind the interests of
historical truth, and the anachronism which I had ventured on at page 82
in the date of Arnobius and Lactantius, I said that I had not "admitted
any actual interference with known facts without notice," questions of
religious controversy, when I said it, not even coming into my thoughts. I
did not consider my Tale to be in any sense controversial, but to be
specially addressed to Catholic readers, and for their edification.

This being s