even your gratitude to Canova to blind you to the superiority of
Flaxman. When we become sensible of our title-deeds to renown in that
single name, we may look for an English public capable of real patronage
to English Art,--and not till then.

I, artist in words, dedicate, then, to you, artist whose ideas speak in
marble, this well-loved work of my matured manhood. I love it not the
less because it has been little understood and superficially judged
by the common herd: it was not meant for them. I love it not the more
because it has found enthusiastic favorers amongst the Few. My affection
for my work is rooted in the solemn and pure delight which it gave me
to conceive and to perform. If I had graven it on the rocks of a desert,
this apparition of my own innermost mind, in its least-clouded moments,
would have been to me as dear; and this ought, I believe, to be the
sentiment with which he whose Art is born of faith in the truth and
beauty of the principles he seeks to illustrate, should regard his work.
Your serener existence, uniform and holy, my lot denies,--if my heart
covets. But our true nature is in our thoughts, not our deeds: and
therefore, in books--which ARE his thoughts--the author's character lies
bare to the discerning eye. It is not in the life of cities,--in the
turmoil and the crowd; it is in the still, the lonely, and more sacred
life, which for some hours, under every sun, the student lives (his
stolen retreat from the Agora to the Cave), that I feel there is between
us the bond of that secret sympathy, that magnetic chain, which unites
the everlasting brotherhood of whose being Zanoni is the type.

E.B.L. London, May, 1845.