I said that I was Clio’s servant. And I felt, when I said it, that you looked at me dubiously¹, and murmured among yourselves.  
Not that you doubted I was somewhat connected with Clio’s household. The lady after whom I have named this book is alive, and well known to some of you personally, to all of you by repute. Nor had you finished my first page before you guessed my theme to be that episode in her life which caused so great a sensation among the newspaper-reading public a few years ago. (It all seems but yesterday, does it not? They are still vivid to us, those head-lines. We have hardly yet ceased to be edified² by the morals pointed³ in those leading articles.) And yet very soon you found me behaving just like any novelist—reporting the exact words that passed between the protagonists⁴ at private interviews—aye, and the exact thoughts and emotions that were in their breasts. Little wonder that you wondered! Let me make things clear to you.
 
I have my mistress’ leave to do this. At first (for reasons which you will presently understand) she demurred⁵. But I pointed out to her that I had been placed in a false position, and that until this were rectified⁶ neither she nor I could reap the credit due to us.
 
Know, then, that for a long time Clio had been thoroughly⁷ discontented. She was happy enough, she says, when first she left the home of Pierus, her father, to become a Muse⁸. On those humble⁹ beginnings she looks back with affection. She kept only one servant, Herodotus. The romantic element in him appealed to her. He died, and she had about her a large staff of able and faithful servants, whose way of doing their work irritated and depressed¹⁰ her. To them, apparently¹¹, life consisted of nothing but politics and military operations—things to which she, being a woman, was somewhat indifferent. She was jealous of Melpomene. It seemed to her that her own servants worked from without at a mass of dry details which might as well be forgotten. Melpomene’s worked on material that was eternally interesting—the souls of men and women; and not from without, either; but rather casting themselves into those souls and showing to us the essence of them. She was particularly struck by a remark of Aristotle’s, that tragedy was “more philosophic” than history, inasmuch as it concerned itself with what might be, while history was concerned with merely what had been. This summed up for her what she had often felt, but could not have exactly formulated¹². She saw that the department over which she presided was at best an inferior one. She saw that just what she had liked—and rightly liked—in poor dear Herodotus was just what prevented him from being a good historian. It was wrong to mix up facts and fancies. But why should her present servants deal with only one little special set of the variegated¹³ facts of life? It was not in her power to interfere¹⁴. The Nine, by the terms of the charter that Zeus had granted to them, were bound to leave their servants an absolutely free hand. But Clio could at least refrain from reading the works which, by a legal fiction, she was supposed to inspire. Once or twice in the course of a century, she would glance into this or that new history book, only to lay it down with a shrug¹⁵ of her shoulders. Some of the mediaeval chronicles she rather liked. But when, one day, Pallas asked her what she thought of “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” her only answer was “ostis toia echei en edone echei en edone toia” (For people who like that kind of thing, that is the kind of thing they like). This she did let slip. Generally, throughout all the centuries, she kept up a pretence¹⁶ of thinking history the greatest of all the arts. She always held her head high among her Sisters. It was only on the sly that she was an omnivorous¹⁷ reader of dramatic and lyric¹⁸ poetry. She watched with keen interest the earliest developments of the prose romance in southern Europe; and after the publication of “Clarissa Harlowe” she spent practically all her time in reading novels. It was not until the Spring of the year 1863 that an entirely¹⁹ new element forced itself into her peaceful life. Zeus fell in love with her.
 
To us, for whom so quickly “time doth transfix the flourish set on youth,” there is something strange, even a trifle ludicrous, in the thought that Zeus, after all these years, is still at the beck and call of his passions. And it seems anyhow lamentable²⁰ that he has not yet gained self-confidence enough to appear in his own person to the lady of his choice, and is still at pains to transform himself into whatever object he deems likeliest to please her. To Clio, suddenly from Olympus, he flashed down in the semblance²¹ of Kinglake’s “Invasion of the Crimea” (four vols., large 8vo, half-calf). She saw through his disguise immediately, and, with great courage and independence, bade him begone. Rebuffed, he was not deflected²³. Indeed it would seem that Clio’s high spirit did but sharpen his desire. Hardly a day passed but he appeared in what he hoped would be the irresistible²⁴ form—a recently discovered fragment of Polybius, an advance copy of the forthcoming issue of “The Historical Review,” the note-book of Professor Carl Voertschlaffen... One day, all-prying Hermes told him of Clio’s secret addiction²⁶ to novel-reading. Thenceforth, year in, year out, it was in the form of fiction that Zeus wooed her. The sole result was that she grew sick of the sight of novels, and found a perverse²⁷ pleasure in reading history. These dry details of what had actually happened were a relief, she told herself, from all that make-believe.
 
One Sunday afternoon—the day before that very Monday on which this narrative²⁸ opens—it occurred to her how fine a thing history might be if the historian had the novelist’s privileges. Suppose he could be present at every scene which he was going to describe, a presence invisible and inevitable²⁹, and equipped with power to see into the breasts of all the persons whose actions he set himself to watch...
 
While the Muse was thus musing³⁰, Zeus (disguised as Miss Annie S. Swan’s latest work) paid his usual visit. She let her eyes rest on him. Hither and thither³¹ she divided her swift mind, and addressed him in winged words. “Zeus, father of gods and men, cloud-compeller, what wouldst thou of me? But first will I say what I would of thee”; and she besought³² him to extend to the writers of history such privileges as are granted to novelists. His whole manner had changed. He listened to her with the massive gravity of a ruler who never yet has allowed private influence to obscure his judgment^{33<............}