quaint travesties [7], even to the most illiterate audience of the
gothic age. It was scarcely more necessary to know Homer then than
now, in order to have heard of Ulysses. The writer in the Athenaeum
is acquainted with Homeric personages, but who on earth would ever
presume to assert that he is acquainted with Homer?

Some doubt has been thrown upon my accuracy in ascribing to the Anglo-
Saxon the enjoyments of certain luxuries (gold and silver plate--the
use of glass, etc.), which were extremely rare in an age much more
recent. There is no ground for that doubt; nor is there a single
article of such luxury named in the text, for the mention of which I
have not ample authority.

I have indeed devoted to this work a degree of research which, if
unusual to romance, I cannot consider superfluous when illustrating an
age so remote, and events unparalleled in their influence over the
destinies of England. Nor am I without the hope, that what the
romance-reader at first regards as a defect, he may ultimately
acknowledge as a merit;--forgiving me that strain on his attention by
which alone I could leave distinct in his memory the action and the
actors in that solemn tragedy which closed on the field of Hastings,
over the corpse of the Last Saxon King.



CONTENTS

BOOK FIRST

The Norman Visitor, the Saxon King, and the Danish Prophetess