I have desired, like every artist, to create a little world out of the beautiful, plesant, and sighnificant things of this marred and clumsy world. and to show in a vision something of the face of Ireland to any of my own people would look where i bid them. i have therefore written down accuratley and candidly much that I have heard and seen, and, except by way if commentary, nothing that I have merley imagined
