THIRD IMPRESSION
*** This is a re-impression of the original edition of 1897. A few small errors have been corrected. In other respects the text has been left, as it came from the late Mr. Gleeson White's hands, unaltered.
Edinburgh: T. and A. Constable, Printers to His Majesty
TO
A. M. G. W. AND C. R. G. W.
IN MEMORY OF THE
MANY HOURS SPENT
UNGRUDGINGLY IN
PROOF READING
[PREFACE]
In a past century the author of a well-digested and elaborately accurate monograph, the fruit of a life's labour, was well content to entitle it 'Brief Contributions towards a History of So-and-So.' Nowadays, after a few weeks' special cramming, a hastily written record of the facts which most impressed the writer is labelled often enough 'A History.' Were this book called by the earlier phrase, it would still be overweighted. Nor did an English idiom exist that would provide the exact synonym for catalogue-raisonné, could the phrase be employed truthfully. It is at most a roughly annotated, tentative catalogue like those issued for art critics on press-days with the superscription 'under revision'—an equivalent of the legal reservation 'without prejudice.' To conceal the labour and present the results in interesting fashion, which is the aim of the Chancellor of the Exchequer on a 'Budget' night, ought also to be that of the compiler of any document crammed with distantly unrelated facts. But the time required for rewriting a book of this class, after it has grown into shape, would be enough to appal a person who had no other duties to perform, and absolutely prohibitive to one not so happily placed.