This eBook was produced by Dagny,
and David Widger,
BY EDWARD BULWER LYTTON
(Lord Lytton)
TO
THE GREAT GERMAN PEOPLE,
A race of thinkers and of critics;
A foreign but familiar audience,
Profound in judgment, candid in reproof, generous in appreciation,
This work is dedicated
By an English Author.
HOWEVER numerous the works of fiction with which, my dear Reader, I havetrespassed on your attention, I leave published but three, of anyaccount, in which the plot has been cast amidst the events, and colouredby the manner, of our own times. The first of these, /Pelham/, composedwhen I was little more than a boy, has the faults, and perhaps themerits, natural to a very early age,—when the novelty itself of lifequickens the observation,—when we see distinctly, and representvividly, what lies upon the surface of the world,—and when, halfsympathising with the follies we satirise, there is a gusto in ourpaintings which atones for their exaggeration. As we grow older weobserve less, we reflect more; and, like Frankenstein, we dissect inorder to create.
The second novel of the present day,* which, after an interval of someyears, I submitted to the world, was one I now, for the first time,acknowledge, and which (revised and corrected) will be included in thisseries, viz., /Godolphin/;—a work devoted to a particular portion ofsociety, and the development of a peculiar class of character. Thethird, which I now reprint, is /Ernest Maltravers/,** the most mature,and, on the whole, the most comprehensive of all that I have hithertowritten.
* For /The Disowned/ is cast in the time of our grandfathers, and /ThePilgrims of the Rhine/ had nothing to do with actual life, and is not,therefore, to be called a novel.
** At the date of this preface /Night and Morning/ had not appeared.
For the original idea, which, with humility, I will venture to call thephilosophical design of a moral education or apprenticeship, I have leftit easy to be seen that I am indebted to Goethe's /Wilhelm Meister/.But, in /Wilhelm Meister/, the apprenticeship is rather that oftheoretical art. In the more homely plan that I set before myself, theapprenticeship is rather that of practical life. And, with this view,it has been especially my study to avoid all those attractions lawful inromance, or tales of pure humour or unbridled fancy, attractions that,in the language of reviewers, are styled under the head of "moststriking descriptions," "scenes of extraordinary power," etc.; and arederived from violent contrasts and exaggerations pushed into caricature.It has been my aim to subdue and tone down the persons introduced, andthe general agencies of the narrative, into the lights and shadows oflife as it is. I do not mean by "life as it is," the vulgar and theoutward life alone, but life in its spiritual and mystic as well as itsmore visible and fleshly characteristics. The idea of not onlydescribing, but developing character under the ripening influences oftime and circumstance, is not confined to the apprenticeship ofMaltravers alone, but pervades the progress of Cesarini, Ferrers, andAlice Darvil.
The original conception of Alice is taken from real life—from a personI never saw but twice, and then she was no longer young—but whosehistory made on me a deep impression. Her early ignorance and home—herfirst love—the strange and affecting fidelity that she