while from 1880 to 1894, as a _Saturday
Review_er, I received, every month, almost everything notable (and a
great deal hardly worth noting) that had appeared in France.

Since then, the cutting off of this supply, and the extreme and constant
urgency of quite different demands on my time, have made my cultivation
of the once familiar field "_parc_ and infrequent." But I doubt whether
any really good judge would say that this was a serious drawback in
itself; and it ceases to be one, even relatively, by the restriction of
the subject to the close of the last century. It will be time to write
of the twentieth-century novel when the twentieth century itself has
gone more than a little farther.

For the abundance of translation, in the earlier part especially, I
need, I think, make no apology. I shall hardly, by any one worth
hearing, be accused of laziness or scamping in consequence of it, for
translation is much more troublesome, and takes a great deal more time,
than comment or history. The advantage, from all other points of view,
should need no exposition: nor, I think, should that of pretty full
story-abstract now and then.

There is one point on which, at the risk of being thought to "talk too
much of my matters," I should like to say a further word. All my books,
before the present volume, have been composed with the aid of a
library, not very large, but constantly growing, and always reinforced
with special reference to the work in hand; while I was able also, on
all necessary occasions, to visit Oxford or London (after I left the
latter as a residence), and for twenty years the numerous public or
semi-public libraries of Edinburgh were also open to me. This present
_History_ has been outlined in expectation for a very long time; and has
been actually laid down for two or three years. But I had not been able
to put much of it on paper when circumstances, while they gave me
greater, indeed almost entire, leisure for writing, obliged me to part
with my own library (save a few books with a reserve _pretium
affectionis_ on them), and, though they brought me nearer both to Oxford
and to London, made it less easy for me to visit either. The London
Library, that Providence of unbooked authors, came indeed to my aid, for
without it I should have had to leave the book alone altogether; and I
have been "munitioned" sometimes, by kindness or good luck, in other
ways. But I have had to rely much more on memory, and of cours