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PREFACE.
the fabrication of sundry pseudo-Eliana; but I believe that the character of the late Elia, printed below, is the only production of this sort, for which Wainewright is really answerable.
It may be fairly and honestly affirmed that no probable channel of information has been overlooked in this biographical essay; and the small items out of which I have tried to construct a connected narrative have been collected together with unusual difficulty, and often from sources far apart. I have dealt occasionally, I own, in inferences and presumptions; and perhaps it may be judged, after all, that I have made too loud a stir about a case which belongs, no doubt, to the family of nugæ literariæ.
W. C. H.
Kensington, January, 1880.
