I wished to point out was that there was a very intelligible reason
why Kingsley should have preferred the popular and poetical name of
Dietrich, even though it was High-German, either to his real Gothic
name, Theodereik, or to its classical metamorphosis, Theodoricus or
Theodorus.

Some other mistakes, too, which have been pointed out, did not seem
to me so serious as to justify their correction in a posthumous
edition. It was said, for instance, that Kingsley ought not to have
called Odoacer and Theodoric, Kings of Italy, as they were only
lieutenants of the Eastern Caesar. Cassiodorus, however, tells us
that Odoacer assumed the name of king (nomen regis Odoacer
assumpsit), and though Gibbon points out that this may only mean that
he assumed the abstract title of a king, without applying it to any
particular nation or country, yet that great historian himself calls
Odoacer, King of Italy, and shows how he was determined to abolish
the useless and expensive office of vicegerent of the emperor.
Kingsley guesses very ingeniously, that Odoacer's assumed title, King
of nations, may have been the Gothic Theode-reiks, the very name of
Theodoric. As to Theodoric himself, Kingsley surely knew his real
status, for he says: 'Why did he not set himself up as Caesar of
Rome? Why did he always consider himself as son-in-arms, and quasi-
vassal of the Caesar of Constantinople?'

Lastly, in speaking of the extinction of the Western Empire with
Romulus Augustulus, Kingsley again simply followed the lead of Gibbon
and other historians; nor can it be said that the expression is not
perfectly legitimate, however clearly modern research may have shown
that the Roman Empire, though dead, lived.