15th March 1835.”

2.  Preface to Strafford (1837).

“I had for some time been engaged in a poem of a very different nature [Sordello] when induced to make the present attempt; and am not without 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 background requires; and my stress lay on the incidents in the development of a soul:  little else is worth study.  I, at least, always thought so—­you, with many known and unknown to me, think so—­others may one day think so:  and whether my attempt remain for them or not, I trust, though away and past it, to continue ever yours, R. B.