PREFACE.
There are two different charges to which the Author of a work like the following may expect to be subject—either that he has copied too closely from other fictions, or that he has sketched too pointedly from individual nature. To one of these he may inadvertently have rendered himself liable by seeing much of men; to the other, by reading little of novels.
To the accusation of plagiarism, if urged, the Author can only plead the conscious innocence of any such intention: to the imputation of personality, unless well supported, he would be unwilling to attempt a serious answer; fearing that, in so doing, he might justly be charged with “the puff indirect,” in supposing his characters so well drawn, as to convey to any one the notion of individual identity. But for this, however, he could most sincerely protest, that he is not aware of any intentional resemblance in any one character or passage.
It would be certainly flattering if the reader of a work like this should leave it with a general impression, that similar persons in such circumstances, either have, or would have acted in a similar manner; but the Author is in this instance no more conscious that they have done so already, than that they will do so hereafter; and has just as much intention to be prophetic as to be personal.
The writer of the following pages owns, with gratitude, that the unexpected favour shown to his former little production, was the parent of the present; but he is aware, at the same time, that this is not a birth to boast of—that popularity is no inheritance; but, on the contrary, as was once said by perhaps the only living writer who never could have had occasion to apply it to himself: “The public will expect the new work to be ten times better than its predecessor; the author will expect that it should be ten times more popular; and it is a hundred to ten that both are disappointed.” This is no doubt generally true; and one may at least imitate, in the humility of one’s anticipations, him who is, in every other respect, inimitable.