tion. I have
still, however, adhered, with a greater fidelity than is customary
in Romance, to all the leading events of the public life of the Roman
Tribune; and the Reader will perhaps find in these pages a more full
and detailed account of the rise and fall of Rienzi, than in any English
work of which I am aware. I have, it is true, taken a view of his
character different in some respects from that of Gibbon or Sismondi.
But it is a view, in all its main features, which I believe (and think I
could prove) myself to be warranted in taking, not less by the facts of
History than the laws of Fiction. In the meanwhile, as I have given the
facts from which I have drawn my interpretation of the principal agent,
the reader has sufficient data for his own judgment. In the picture of
the Roman Populace, as in that of the Roman Nobles of the fourteenth
century, I follow literally the descriptions left to us;--they are not
flattering, but they are faithful, likenesses.

Preserving generally the real chronology of Rienzi's life, the plot of
this work extends over a space of some years, and embraces the variety
of characters necessary to a true delineation of events. The story,
therefore, cannot have precisely that order of interest found in
fictions strictly and genuinely dramatic, in which (to my judgment at
least) the time ought to be as limited as possible, and the characters
as few;--no new character of importance to the catastrophe being
admissible towards the end of the work. If I may use the word Epic in
its most modest and unassuming acceptation, this Fiction, in short,
though indulging in dramatic situations, belongs, as a whole, rather to
the Epic than the Dramatic school.

I cannot conclude without rendering the tribute of my praise and homage
to the versatile and gifted Author of the beautiful Tragedy of Rienzi.
Considering that our hero be the same--considering that we had the same
materials from which to choose our several stories--I trust I shall
be found to have little, if at all, trespassed upon ground previously
occupied. With the single exception of a love-intrigue between a
relative of Rienzi and one of the antagonist party, which makes the
plot of Miss Mitford's Tragedy, and is little more than an episode in my
Romance, having slight effect on the conduct and none on the fate of the
hero, I am not aware of any resemblance between the two works; and even
this coincidence I could easily have removed, had I dee