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I present the public with my latest discoveries in the slight Sibylline
pages. Scattered and unconnected as they were, I have been obliged to add
links, and model the work into a consistent form. But the main substance
rests on the truths contained in these poetic rhapsodies, and the divine
intuition which the Cumaean damsel obtained from heaven.
I have often wondered at the subject of her verses, and at the English
dress of the Latin poet. Sometimes I have thought, that, obscure and
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
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