SUPPLEMENT. INTRODUCTION. By way of Introduction to this Supplement, read the following "Preface to the Second Edition. "The first edition of this work having, contrary to expectation, spread itself abroad with some degree of impetus, has, as in that case was partly natural, brought me into correspondence with various possessors and collectors of Cromwell letters, has brought obliging contributions, and indications true and fallacious, from far sources and from near; and, on the whole, has disinterred from their wide-spread slumber a variety of letters not before known to me, or not before remembered by me. With which new letters it became a rather complex question what was now to be done. "They were not, in general, of much, or almost of any, intrinsic importance; might here and there have saved some ugly labor and research, had they been known in time; but did not now, as it turned out, tend to modify, in any essential particular, what had already been set down, and sent forth to the world as a kind of continuous connected book. It is true, all clearly authentic letters of Cromwell, never so unimportant, do claim to be preserved; and in this book, by the title of it, are naturally to be looked for. But, on the other hand, how introduce them now? To unhoop your cask again, and try to insert new staves, when the old staves, better or worse, do already hang together, is what no cooper will recommend! Not to say that your set of Cromwe letters can never, in this second or in any other edition, be considered as complete: an uncounted handful of needles to be pricked from an unmeasured continent of hay, how can you ever assure yourself that you have them all? " After deliberation, the law of the case seemed to be somewhat as follows: First, that whatever letters would easily fit themselves into the book as it stood-easily, or even with labor, if that were all-should be duly admitted. Secondly, that for such letters as tended to bring into better relief any feature of the man or his work; much more, had they tended to correct or alter in any respect any feature I had assigned to him or to it, that for these an effort should be made, if needful; even a considerable effort; effort, in fact, to be limited only by this consideration, Not to damage by it to a still greater degree the already extant, and so by one's effort accomplish only loss. Thirdly, that for such Cromwell letters as did not fall under either of these descriptions, but were nevertheless clearly of his composition, there should be an Appendix provided. In which, without pretension to commentary, and not needing to be read along with the text, but only apart from it if at all, they might at least stand correctly printed they, and certain other pieces of more doubtful claim; for most part letters too, but of half, or, in some cases, of wholly official character; if by chance they were elucidative, brief, and not easily attainable elsewhere. Into which Appendix also, as into a loose back-room or lumber-room, not bound to be organic or habitable, bound only to be maintained in a reasonably swept condition, any still new letters of Cromwell might without ceremony be disposed. "Upon these principles this second edition has been produced. New letters, intercalated into the text, and letters lying in loose rank in the appendix, all that I had, or could hear of or get any trace of hitherto, are here given. For purchasers of the first edition, the new matter has been detached, printed as a Supplement, which the bookseller undertakes to sell at prime cost. And now, having twice escaped alive from these detestable dust-abysses, let me beg to be allowed to consider this my small act of homage to the memory of a hero as finished-this second edition of Oliver's Letters and Speeches as the final one. New letters, should such. still turn up, I will not, except they contradict some statement, or fiber of a statement, in the text, undertake to introduce there, but deposit them without ceremony in the loose lumber-room, in a more or less swept condition. "London, 11th May, 1846." "T. CARLYLE. The foregoing preface will sufficiently explain what this Supplement pretends to be. The new letters, documents, and elucidations concerning Cromwell are all here; but nothing could be given here except in the detached form, each piece standing on its own basis, and to be counted only as a supplemental one, without support from the others, except what the reader's own intelligence and diligence might furnish. Such new letters as have been interwoven into the new text, these, with their commentary, stand here first in order; may perhaps pretend, even in their disunited form, to a little more importance than the others. The Appendix is given wholly as it stands in the new edition. For each new piece I have indicated the old page to which it hooks, or might hook, itself; and where that seemed of any benefit, the page and sentence. And so to the reader's "intelligence and diligence," which alone are sovereign in all cases, we will leave this somewhat confused case of the Supplement to Oliver's Letters and Speeches. |