A History of Greece

most persons seem to think that the other ought to be confined to terms which have become familiar and naturalised in our language, he has not ventured to apply his principle with rigid consistency, where the reader's eye would perhaps have been hurt by it, but has suffered anomaly to reign in this as in the other department of orthography. He would not fear much severity of censure, if those only should condemn him who have tried the experiment themselves, or can point out the example of any writer who has given universal satisfaction in this respect. The only great liberty he has taken is that of writing the real names of the Greek deities, instead of substituting those of the Italian mythology by which they have hitherto been supplanted, though even here he could now defend his boldness by some respectable precedents.

Trinity College, June 12. 1835.

THE foregoing Advertisement was prefixed to the first volume of the First Edition, at a time when it was intended to limit the work to a compass wider indeed than that of the original design, but still much narrower than that which it has actually reached. The manner in which it has grown to its present dimensions may explain, and perhaps in some degree palliate, the defects of the plan, which could not now be remedied unless by a complete recasting of the whole. The object of the publishers, in the present edition, was chiefly to render it accessible to a large class of persons whom the smallness of the type might have deterred from taking it up in its earlier form. Under these circumstances, the author has thought it best to abstain, as far as possible, from any alteration of the text, and to insert whatever seemed necessary in the way of correction or further illustration in the notes. In fact he has altered the text only where it was at variance with his present views. And such corrections he will think himself bound to make in the subsequent volumes. In the present, the number of the notes has been considerably enlarged, beside the addition of a new Appendix on the History of the Homeric Poems. The remainder of the work will no doubt afford abundant occasion for similar enlargement: but to what extent this may be carried must depend on the leisure and opportunities which the author may enjoy; on which he cannot now calculate with any approach to certainty.

London, May, 1845.