I am therefore sure of the intrinsic interest of my subject, and am tremulous only about its treatment. Of this much I at least am certain--that no one will exclaim, as Horace did 2,000 years ago: ----“Quis feræ Bellum curet Iberiæ?” or be indifferent to the exploits of Englishmen in a country, with whose people the same Horace coupled a most flattering epithet--“_peritus Iber_.” The splendour and the decadence, the glory and misfortunes, the ancient grandeur and the existing distresses of Spain, the great historic parts which we have played either in unison or in rivalry,--above all, the terrible struggle which we maintained together against a Power with which it was at first despair to cope, and yet brought to a triumphant issue, make it impossible that any record of that struggle can be received with indifference; and the customary fate of rashness and incompetency is the only one that I have to apprehend. That these great and glorious exploits should not have hitherto formed the subject of any extended poem may at first appear surprising. But the reason is obvious--the time had not yet arrived. The glare of contemporary fame is unfavourable to poetic celebration, except in the form of Pindar’s Olympionics, in dithyrambic odes imbued with the intoxication of victory, or otherwise in such short reflective sonnets as embodied a Wordsworth’s calm and philosophic spirit. The mists of time must be interposed before the hero rises to the Demigod, an entirely new generation must have succeeded, and the poet must himself belong to that generation. The halo of Imagination must invest what was before Reality, the subject must have attained the dignity of the _myth_, or heroic legend, and Ideal Art must be unencumbered by the pressure of the Actual. That time appears to have arrived. Forty years have elapsed since the commencement of this mighty struggle; those of our Peninsular heroes whom the shock of battle spared, have nearly all been gathered to their fathers, and those who remain are like late surviving Nestors whose heads are crowned with the snowy tonsure of Time.