have it relegated to those "_biblia a-biblia_" from which class he is
sure Elia would cheerfully except Dorothy's letters. In the notes
themselves the endeavour has been to obtain, where it was possible,
parallel references to letters, diaries, or memoirs, and the Editor can
only regret that his researches, through both MSS. and printed records,
have been so little successful. In the case of well-known men like
Algernon Sydney, Lord Manchester, Edmund Waller, etc., no attempt has
been made to write a complete note,--their lives and works being
sufficiently well known; but in the case of more obscure persons,--as,
for instance, Dorothy's brother-in-law, Sir Thomas Peyton,--all the
known details of their history have been carefully collected. Yet in
spite of patience, toil, and the kindness of learned friends, the Editor
is bound to acknowledge that some names remain mere words to him, and
but too many allusions are mysteriously dim.

The division of the letters into chapters, at first sight an arbitrary
arrangement, really follows their natural grouping. The letters were
written in the years 1653 and 1654, and form a clear and connected story
of the love affairs of the young couple during that time. The most
important group of letters, both from the number of letters contained in
it and the contents of the letters themselves, is that entitled "Life at
Chicksands, 1653." The Editor regards this group as the very mainland of
the epistolary archipelago that we are exploring. For it is in this
chapter that a clear idea of the domestic social life of these troublous
times is obtainable, none the less valuable in that it does not tally
altogether with our preconceived and too romantic notions. Here, too, we
find what Macaulay longed for--those social domestic trivialities which
the historians have at length begun to value rightly. Here are, indeed,
many things of no value to Dryasdust and his friends, but of moment to
us, who look for and find true details of life and character in nearly