contact, so far as all these affected the development of his genius. And here again I found the need of trustworthy information. Well informed as we may be on the history of literature and culture during the latter half of the eighteenth century, yet our information as to musical events and persons is meagre and obscure, and we know least of those regions which are of the greatest interest in the history of music. I doubt not that an historian, occupied with the study of this age, would discover much that has escaped me of interest, although I have heard even such complain of the poverty of material.
I have striven with a certain amount of zeal to bring together all that appeared to render my narrative more graphic and lifelike, and have not refrained from adducing my authorities, partly for the sake of accuracy, partly to point the way to those who find the subject of interest. I have gone even further than this, and have added to the names of many persons, principally musicians, of whom mention had to be made, a short notice of their life and sometimes an epitome of their performances. It is probable that the minority of my readers will already have such facts in their minds, and they are essential to a clear perception of the whole work: I have been anxious to spare them the trouble of continual reference to a biographical dictionary.
I have confined myself to the accessible and, of its kind, excellent Dictionary of Musicians by Gerber and Fétis, but my own investigations, leading me into the detailed history of this time, have not seldom supplied additional data for such notices; I remark this not to depreciate the merit of those works, but that it may not be supposed that my statements can always be verified by a reference to accessible authorities.
You may perhaps smile at the zeal of the "philolog" betraying itself in such minute particulars. Be it so. I hold to my craft, and occasionally you will not find it amiss that I do so.
I may remark besides, not to you, but to those who hold in horror notes, digressions, quotations, and references as the merciless weapons of pedantry, that they need not for this
reason at once reject my book. I have striven so to write that the text is complete in itself and requires no notes for its comprehension; and those who do not desire the information they contain, may contentedly pass them over. On the other hand, I hope that you will uphold my opinion that the application of the scientific method even to these researches, cannot but be to their advantage. This is perhaps most strikingly evident in the chronological notification of each separate work.