If, therefore, the reader should detect, in the following abstract of the plot, any little deviation from strict historical accuracy, let him reflect, for a moment, whether Agamemnon would not have found as much to censure in the Iliad,--Dido in the Aeneid,--or Godfrey in the Jerusalem.
Let him not suffer his opinions to depend on circumstances which cannot possibly affect the truth or falsehood of the representation.

If it be impossible for a single man to kill hundreds in battle, the impossibility is not diminished by distance of time.

If it be as certain that Rinaldo never disenchanted a forest in Palestine as it is that the Duke of Wellington never disenchanted the forest of Soignies, can we, as rational men, tolerate the one story and ridicule the other?
Of this, at least, I am certain, that whatever excuse we have for admiring the plots of those famous poems our children will have for extolling that of the "Wellingtoniad." I shall proceed to give a sketch of the narrative.

The subject is "The Reign of the Hundred Days.".