Transcriber's Notes:
1. Page scan source: Google Books
https://books.google.com/books?id=hLFEAAAAYAAJ
(University of Virginia)
The Introduction is written by Laurie Magnus, M.A.;the Title-page is designed by Ivor I. J. Symes.
George Payne Rainsford James, Historiographer Royal to King WilliamIV., was born in London in the first year of the nineteenth century,and died at Venice in 1860. His comparatively short life wasexceptionally full and active. He was historian, politician andtraveller, the reputed author of upwards of a hundred novels, thecompiler and editor of nearly half as many volumes of letters,memoirs, and biographies, a poet and a pamphleteer, and, during thelast ten years of his life, British Consul successively inMassachusetts, Norfolk (Virginia), and Venice. He was on terms offriendship with most of the eminent men of his day. Scott, on whosestyle he founded his own, encouraged him to persevere in his career asa novelist; Washington Irving admired him, and Walter Savage Landorcomposed an epitaph to his memory. He achieved the distinction ofbeing twice burlesqued, by Thackeray, and two columns are devoted toan account of him in the new "Dictionary of National Biography." Eachgeneration follows its own gods, and G. P. R. James was, perhaps, tooprolific an author to maintain the popularity which made him "in someways the most successful novelist of his time." But his work bearsselection and revival. It possesses the qualities of seriousness andinterest; his best historical novels are faithful in setting and freein movement. His narrative is clear, his history conscientious, andhis plots are well-conceived. English learning and literature areenriched by the work of this writer, who made vivid every epoch in theworld's history by the charm of his romance.
The great passage in this book is so magnificently dramatic that Jamesfeels it due to his conscience as an historian to apologise for itsexcellence in a footnote. "It may be necessary," he writes at the footof page 234, "to inform those who are not deeply read in thechronicles of France that this fact is minutely accurate." We areglad of the reminder, for without it the reader might have thoughtthat here was something fictitious, or at least exaggerated and'worked-up,' so intense and true is the tragic setting of the scene.But if Mary of Burgundy's bearing at the execution of the Lord ofImbercourt, and her grand historical utterance, recorded on page 305,"You have banished my best friends, and slain my wisest counsellors,and now what can I do to deliver you?" if these public appearances ofthe heiress of Charles the Bold, and the love which she cherished forthe husband who was chosen for her on political grounds, justify Jamesin raising her to the title-role in this romance, it must be concededthat the real hero is Albert Maurice, citizen of Ghent, a noblemediæval prototype of the citoyens of the French Revolution,Whatever defects in character-study have been ascribed to James, noone can deny that in Albert Maurice his skill was equal to itsmaterial. The figure of the young President is firmly and consistentlydrawn, and the conception touches considerable heig