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it, which appears to me as fine as any thing in Amadis de Gaul or Tristan de Leonois.
There are no notes to the present poem. I have done my best, as every writer should, to be true to costume and manners, to time and place; and if the reader understands me as he goes, and feels touched where I am most ambitious he should be, I can be content that he shall miss an occasional nicety or so in other matters, and not be quite sensible of the mighty extent of my information. If the poem reach posterity, curiosity may find commentators enough for it, and the sanction of time give interest to whatever they may trace after me. If the case be otherwise, to write notes is only to shew to how little purpose has been one's reading. I shall merely observe, that of the direct obligations, of which I am conscious, and which perhaps, after all, I have not handled well enough to make worth the acknow-
