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The sale which this work has had in its original form has induced my publisher to recommend a cheaper and more popular one; and I myself gladly seize the opportunity of correcting some of the errors in print and expression which, though gradually diminished in preceding editions, left even the last edition imperfect. An author with ordinary modesty must always be conscious of many defects in his own work. I am so in mine. Still I venture to say that the portraits I have drawn have, upon the whole, been thought truthful and impartial; and though I have been often reminded of the difficulty which Sir Walter Raleigh, when writing the History of the World, experienced in ascertaining the real particulars of a tumult that took place under his windows – almost every anecdote one hears on the best authority being certain to find contradiction in some of its particulars – I have not refrained from quoting those anecdotes which came to me from good authority or the general report of the period; since a story which brings into relief the reputed character of the person it is applied to, and which, to use the Italian proverb, ought to be true if it is not so, is far from being indifferent to history.

In conclusion, I cannot but express my thanks, not only to public, but to private and previously unknown critics, whose remarks have always received a willing and grateful attention, and to whose suggestions I am greatly indebted.

Nov. 6, 1869.