chaotic as they are, they owe their present form to me, their decipherer.
As if we should give to another artist, the painted fragments which form
the mosaic copy of Raphael's Transfiguration in St. Peter's; he would put
them together in a form, whose mode would be fashioned by his own peculiar
mind and talent. Doubtless the leaves of the Cumaean Sibyl have suffered
distortion and diminution of interest and excellence in my hands. My only
excuse for thus transforming them, is that they were unintelligible in
their pristine condition.

My labours have cheered long hours of solitude, and taken me out of a
world, which has averted its once benignant face from me, to one glowing
with imagination and power. Will my readers ask how I could find solace
from the narration of misery and woeful change? This is one of the
mysteries of our nature, which holds full sway over me, and from whose
influence I cannot escape. I confess, that I have not been unmoved by the
development of the tale; and that I have been depressed, nay, agonized, at
some parts of the recital, which I have faithfully transcribed from my
materials. Yet such is human nature, that the excitement of mind was dear
to me, and that the imagination, painter of tempest and earthquake, or,
worse, the stormy and ruin-fraught passions of man, softened my real
sorrows and endless regrets, by clothing these fictitious ones in that
ideality, which takes the mortal sting from pain.

I hardly know whether this apology is necessary. For the merits of my
adaptation and translation must decide how far I have well bestowed my time
and imperfect powers, in giving form and substance to the frail and
attenuated Leaves of the Sibyl.