when I reflect on the varied story of their lives and fortunes, their virtues and even their vices, their fervid loves and their outspoken hates,—I am often fain to echo the sentiment of Shenstone:—"Oh, quanto minus est cum reliquis versari, quam vestrum meminisse!"
Enough by way of introduction to the book, which it is now time, in ancient fashion, to bid "goe forth." With no pretensions to unity of design as a biographical essay, a history of the literary epoch, or a critical analysis of its character and productions, it must be regarded rather as a series of fragmentary episodes than a connected work. The sketches of Maclise were often hasty and furtive; the illustrations of his literary collaborator, Maginn, too frequently redolent of an impure Hippocrene; and my own "Memoirs," written among the interruptions and distractions of professional life, will sometimes, I fear, show traces of carelessness and crudity, which revision might have allowed me an opportunity of correcting. However, such as it is, I now commit it to the reader, with the humble obsecration of the Latin poet:—
"Da veniam subitis, et, qui legis ista, memento,
Me dare non librum, sed Σχεδίασμα tibi."
