This is the annotated edition including a detailed biographical primer on the life and works of the author.
Here is another volume of Washington Irving’s delightful Miscellanies, drawn ‘ from the enchanted fountains of old Spanish chronicles.’ ‘Few events in history, ‘ prefaces the author, ‘have been so signal and striking in their main circumstances, and so overwhelming and enduring in their consequences, as that of the conquest of Spain by the Saracens.’ From the records of this mighty event has Washington Irving woven his volume of fixing legends; ‘not claiming for them the authenticity of sober history, yet giving nothing that has not historical foundation.’ Tinctured with saintly miracle, savoring of the cloister, and rich in romantic fictions that betray their Arabian authors, — from such apocryphal sources, Spanish historians have taken their rise, ‘as pure rivers may be traced up to the fens and mantled pools of a morass.’ It is true that discriminating authors have only culled such particulars as, from their probability and congruity, might be safely recorded as historical facts; yet, most of these are tinged from their romantic source.