". . . having had occasion to read the original authorities from which modern historians have drawn their accounts of the life of Rienzi, I was led to believe that a very remarkable man had been superficially judged, and a very important period crudely examined. And this belief was sufficiently strong to induce me at first to meditate a more serious work upon the life and times of Rienzi. I have taken a view of his character different in some respects from that of Gibbon or Sismondi. But it is a view, in all its main features, which I believe (and think I could prove) myself to be warranted in taking, not less by the facts of History than the laws of Fiction." -- From Bulwer-Lytton's Preface