PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION

Summary

Although it cannot be within my province to seek to reply to the verdict which certain journals have made it their business to pronounce on my having committed to the press the Humboldt-Varnhagen correspondence, I yet feel it incumbent upon me to notice at some length the protest of Alexander von Humboldt himself, inserted in the daily papers by the late General Hedemann, against any unauthorized publication of his letters. I am the more prompted to do this, as that protest has been published by the General with pointed reference to this publication; and, therefore, with the evident intention of producing the erroneous belief that the letters directed to Varnhagen were included in that protest. In justice to myself I must not allow such a belief to gain ground, although there is enough in the protest itself to refute it.

In this document, a portion of which has only been communicated by the General, Humboldt first of all states that more than two thousand letters were written by him every year to all sorts of persons.

He therefore says, “I contest the pretended right even of those who by chance or purchase have become the possessors of confidential letters of mine,” and then he protests against such letters being printed, even after his death.