In reply to your letter of last night, which I received this morning, allow me to say that your pecuniary terms are offered in the same spirit of liberality (I had almost said of prodigality) which has marked all your transactions of that nature which have come to my knowledge. I, in return, am bound to do all I can to make my work not unworthy of such liberality. I think it will be better not to embarrass the pages with biographical notes, but to subjoin a biographical index, where each name will, once for all, tell its own story. I shall also endeavour to throw as much as I can into the text, and to make my notes as compendious as the nature of the explanation to be given will admit.
