Venice in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries

Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. Nine years ago I published a volume on the Early History of Venice, which I brought down to the conquest of Constantinople in A.D.1204. Very few copies of this have been sold, and some of the English reviews of it found it very dry. But, on the whole, I had no reason to complain of the treatment it received from the critics, which was indeed better than it deserved. Only one review was distinctly condemnatory: this was the work of a scholar well versed in Venetian and in general mediaeval history, who was apparently an accomplished disciple of the late Professor Freeman, and had imbibed not only much of the learning of his master, but also a strong infusion of his literary manners. I was, on the other hand, much gratified by the very kind appreciation of my book that was contributed by an accomplished English student of Italian literature to the Athenceum. I was still more pleased, and not a little surprised, to receive from German scholars two notices of my book, which, while not sparing criticism, treated it as a work of interest to European learning. Of these reviews, one was contributed to the Deutsche Literaturzeitu?ig of the 24 th of May 1902 by Dr. Ernst Gerland of Homburg, who is or was, I believe, editor of the Byzantinische Zeitschrift and author of a Geschichte des lateinischen Kaiserreichs von Konstantmopel, the first volume of which has appeared since his review of my book; the other by Dr. H.Kretzschmayr to the Mittheilungen des Jnstituts fur osterreichische Geschichtsforschung in Wien.