historian in the more serious novel of history does not trouble the
ordinary reader nor does it detract from the interest of the story. How
little the grossest errors in biography and history affect the opinions of
the public concerning a novel long popular may be illustrated by the fact
that one of my critics referred me to Henry Esmond for an example of
desirable accuracy. It was an unfortunate choice, for in Esmond there is
hardly a correct historical statement. The Duke of Hamilton described as
about to marry Beatrix was the husband of a second living wife and the
father of seven children--an example of contemplated literary bigamy which
does not distress the happily ignorant, nor are they at all troubled by the
many other and even more singular errors in statement, some of them plainly
the result of carelessness. A novel, it seems, may sin sadly as concerns
historic facts and yet survive.

The purpose of the novel is, after all, to be acceptably interesting. If it
be historical, the historic people should not be the constantly present
heroes of the book. The novelist's proper use of them is to influence the
fates of lesser people and to give the reader such sense of their reality
as in the delineation of characters, is rarely possible for the historian.

With these long intended comments, I leave this book to the many readers
whose wants a new edition is meant to supply. I may say in conclusion that
I should have been less eager to alter, correct, and explain if it were not
that in schools and colleges Hugh Wynne has been and is still used in a
variety of ways so that the example of accuracy and a definition of its
desirable extent in historic fiction becomes in some sense a literary duty.

S. WEIR MITCHELL.

August, 1908.