partially rewritten.

Bills reported favorably are engrossed, that is, rewritten neatly as amended, and are placed on the Calendar, or list of bills ready for third reading.

Thus history is perpetually rewritten; fresh knowledge opens new vistas in the past as well as the future; the discovery of to-day may rectify, in important respects, the statement which has been unchallenged for centuries; one new truth leavens a thousand old formulas; and nothing is more gradual than the elucidation of historical events and characters.

In editing this manuscript for modern readers I have therefore been compelled to practically rewrite it entirely, retaining merely the essential facts, with an occasional descriptive passage, although I have conscientiously followed the original development of the tale.

These vary in their literary merits and in the merits of their several parts, for they have been successively rewritten at different periods, receiving always something of the color, belief, and adornment which belonged to the writer's time; but under all may be dimly traced, as in a palimpsest, the remote pagan original.

In the year 1827, there were scarcely any alterations made on the text of the poem, as printed in 1820; still fewer were added in 1832; but for the edition of 1836 the whole was virtually rewritten, and in that state it was finally left, although a few significant changes were made in 1845.