His testimonial is written in the liberal and courteous spirit characteristic of him, but with a degree of eulogium which would make me shrink from quoting it did I not feel the importance of his voucher for the substantial accuracy of my work: "Mr.Irving's late publication, the 'Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada,' has superseded all further necessity for poetry and, unfortunately for me, for history.

He has fully availed himself of all the picturesque and animating movement of this romantic era, and the reader who will take the trouble to compare his chronicle with the present more prosaic and literal narrative will see how little he has been seduced from historic accuracy by the poetical aspect of his subject.

The fictitious and romantic dress of his work has enabled him to make it the medium of reflecting more vividly the floating opinions and chimerical fancies of the age, while he has illuminated the picture with the dramatic brilliancy of coloring denied to sober history."* * Prescott's Ferdinand and Isabella, vol.ii.c.

15.
In the present edition I have endeavored to render the work more worthy of the generous encomium of Mr.Prescott.Though I still retain the fiction of the monkish author Agapida, I have brought my narrative more strictly within historical bounds, have corrected and enriched it in various parts with facts recently brought to light by the researches of Alcantara and others, and have sought to render it a faithful and characteristic picture of the romantic portion of history to which it relates.
W.I.
Sunnyside, 1850.
A CHRONICLE OF THE CONQUEST OF GRANADA..