which are now only ornaments to yourself be ripened into utility to the world. In that hope how many are included! and in wishing your path to tend to the happiness of others, have I not wished you, not only the noblest, but the shortest road to your own?

In other years, when the work which I inscribe to you may be forgotten by every one else, these lines will preserve it fresh in unabated interest to you. Nor will you hereafter judge of me less charitably in the capacity of the man, because in that of the author I have asked you to pardon many errors and much deficiency for the sake of some

affection.

Woodcote, Nov. 8th, 1828.

PREFACE.

ΤΟ

THE SECOND EDITION OF THE DISOWNED.

SOME objections have been made to "The Disowned," which I may as well take advantage of the opportunity now afforded me to notice. In judging a work, criticism is generally bound to look first to the author's design; and if the design be good upon the whole, not to censure too strongly those faults from which, in parts, its very nature would scarcely allow it to be free. My design, when I wrote this book, was not to detail a mere series of events in the history of one individual or of another, it was to personify certain dispositions influential upon conduct, and to trace, through vanity, through ambition, through pride, through selfishness, through philanthropy, through addiction to sensual, through addiction to mental enjoyments, through the dark windings of vice, which is ignorance,— through the broad course of virtue, which is wisdom, the various channels in which the grand principles of human conduct pour their secret but unceasing tide. This design is exhibited, sometimes in action, sometimes in reflection; and it is more or less veiled in proportion to the importance of the characters, and the danger of incurring the error (common to most metaphysical writers of fiction) of sinking the human and physical traits of the individual by too elaborate a portraiture of those more immaterial and mental,- and so creating, not creatures of flesh and blood, but thinking automata and reasoning machines.

I have deemed it necessary to make this explanation, partly because, by stating what was my design, I best get rid of objections made to any design erroneously imputed to me,― partly because it may be prudent to apprize the reader that it is rather to the development of character than to the conduct of a story, that he is, in these volumes, to look for interest or entertainment.

Against the distinct separation maintained between the two plots in this novel, until, by one of the refined and almost imperceptible casualities in human life, the hero of the one becomes the innocent cause of the catastrophe of the other, much has been said. It appeared to me, however, that in the creation and the disunion of these two plots, there were advantages more than counterbalancing the objections, and compensating, by utility, for a deviation from custom. How far I was right or erroneous in my adgment, the reader upon hearing my motive, must decide. In the picture of human nature which this work is intended to exhibit, I thought it would be both a curious and a new plan to make two marked divisions: human nature as we see it in ordinary life, and human nature in its rarer attributes, and upon a less level scale. The illustration of each of these divisions is the origin of the two plots. Clarence Linden is the hero of one, Algernon Mordaunt of the other. The characters which, for the most part, either hero encounters, are in keeping with himself: those persons, for instance, with whom the events of Linden's life are connected, are chiefly of the mould of which Nature makes frequent use.* .* The few who appear prominently in Mor

It is true that some of the characters peculiar to the course of Linden's adventures are uncommon, as Talbot, Cole, Warner; but they are so by the union of certain qualities, not by the qualities themselves, which are common and mediocre. On the contrary, the two characters prominently brought into ac tion with Mordaunt (Crauford and Wolfe) are composed of

the two plots by which it is so presented should not have been combined more closely than they are. Had they been blended into a single story, not only the design for which they were formed, and which consisted especially in keeping them distinct from each other, would have been wholly lost, but whatever value the delineation of the characters themselves might possess would have been considerably impaired: and while one order of beings would have seemed stilted and unnatural, the other would have appeared commonplace and trite. That by this separation the mere interest of story is sometimes interrupted, I allow, and I foresaw that it would be so. But even had the progress and denouement of a tale been more immediately my object than in this work they have been, might I not ask, if interruption, although in the most interesting parts of a novel, is not rather to be sought for than shunned? - and whether Johnson is not right when he says, that "Fiction cannot move so much but that the attention may be easily transferred," - -that "the disturbance of one man may be the relief of another," that "different authors have different habitudes," and that " upon the whole, all pleasure consists, in variety ?"

One other objection against "The Disowned" I must suffer to remain unanswered, because I subscribe to its justice; that objection is, the too frequent recurrence of grave remark. Perhaps, however, had "Pelham" been considered less light, "The Disowned" would not have daunt's history are of a less common clay. Now if I was right in believing it worth while to exhibit the great panorama of life in these two points of view, it is clear that been found so serious, for the introduction of reflection qualities rendered rare by their extremes. Thus, if the beings of the former history are eccentric, they are eccentric upon another and a far less elevated scale than those of the latter,

makes, after all, but a small portion of the book: and while, for those to whom reflection is not tedious, that portion may have the attraction of thoughts less hackneyed than, in works of fiction, thoughts generally are, I am not sure that the idle are wearied by a greater number of pages than, in all works, they are accustomed to skip.

For the rest, there are many faults in "The Disowned," which publication has brought more glaringly before me,— some inseparable from inexperience, some from adherence to a plan which, perhaps, I have been led to overvalue. These faults I may have been unable to shun in this work; let me hope to atone for them in another. In the meanwhile, I console myself with the belief that, if it be sometimes true that we learn wisdom from the follies of others, much more often is it true that our own errors are the best guides to future good, and our own failures the surest instruments from which to shape out a reasonable hope of our ultimate success.

London, March 24th, 1835.