By Max Beerbohm
283
Perhaps, in my study of the period, I may have fallen so deeply beneath its spell that I have tended, now and again, to exaggerate its real importance. I lay no claim to the true historical spirit. I fancy it was a red-chalk drawing of a girl in a mob-cap, signed "Frank Miles, 1880," that first impelled me to research. To give an accurate and exhaustive account of the period would need a far less brilliant pen than mine. But I hope that, by dealing, even so briefly as I have dealt, with its more strictly sentimental aspects, I may have lightened the task of the scientific historian. And I look to Professor Gardiner and to the Bishop of Oxford.
