DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.5827#0016
VI PREFACE.
acquaintance with the manners, customs and habits,
the literature, arts and social condition of that country
to the description of which they are confined. In the
present series, if there shall be found less to entertain,
there will, I trust, be more to instruct, and a fair
balance of advantage in the reader's favour be there-
by struck. In saying this, I am not vain enough to
imagine that I have done justice to the subject, far
from it; but although sensible that in abler hands
it might have been made full of high and stirring
interest, I trust I may be allowed to say, that I
have collected information from a variety of sources
not open to general readers, and that, with all its de-
ficiencies, the volume will contain the results of much
painful and laborious research. I might have pro-
duced an apparently learned work at less cost of ex-
ertion,—for the mask of learning is easily assumed;
but my purpose has been rather to be understood by
unlearned readers, than to challenge the higher and
more fastidious reading of learned men.
In writing these lives, it has been my aim to con-
vey all the information in my power, without en-
cumbering the text with dry details, or embarrassing
it by multiplying the names of persons and places ;
acquaintance with the manners, customs and habits,
the literature, arts and social condition of that country
to the description of which they are confined. In the
present series, if there shall be found less to entertain,
there will, I trust, be more to instruct, and a fair
balance of advantage in the reader's favour be there-
by struck. In saying this, I am not vain enough to
imagine that I have done justice to the subject, far
from it; but although sensible that in abler hands
it might have been made full of high and stirring
interest, I trust I may be allowed to say, that I
have collected information from a variety of sources
not open to general readers, and that, with all its de-
ficiencies, the volume will contain the results of much
painful and laborious research. I might have pro-
duced an apparently learned work at less cost of ex-
ertion,—for the mask of learning is easily assumed;
but my purpose has been rather to be understood by
unlearned readers, than to challenge the higher and
more fastidious reading of learned men.
In writing these lives, it has been my aim to con-
vey all the information in my power, without en-
cumbering the text with dry details, or embarrassing
it by multiplying the names of persons and places ;