XIV PREFACE. 



under the necessity of writing the whole 

 over; but in doing this, though often 

 obliged to supply the forms of whole 

 sentences, of which only hints or cy- 

 phers exist in the manuscript, he has 

 been careful to give as literal a trans- 

 lation of the rest as the materials would 

 allow. This principle ever kept in 

 view, and the difficulty of the under- 

 taking, which, small as the book is, has 

 taken up much of his time for seven 

 years past, must apologize for any inele- 

 gancies of composition. Yet in many 

 parts the original displays a natural and 

 striking eloquence, of which the trans- 

 lation may possibly fall short. Such 

 passages, when they occurred, repaid 

 the labour and perplexity of studying 

 for hours to decypher some obscure 

 mark, or some ill-written Swedish or 



