Excerpt from Fragment of a Parallel Between the History, Literature, and Art of Italy in the Middle Ages The rest of it was written at home, during the course of the winter 1861-62. I had then plenty of books of reference, and might have made it as full as I liked. I did not make use of any except the very commonest - not so much from indolence, though that may have had something to do with it too, as because to do so would have been to travel far beyond the scope of my original intention. The effect of hav ing so great a command of facts has been, naturally enough, to swell the dimensions of the latter part of this sketch out of all proportion to those of the earlier. I find, on looking back over it, that I apologise for my prolixity very early in the proceedings. Repentance, however, does not produce amendment. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.