This eBook was produced by Dagny,
and David Widger,
EDWARD BULWER LYTTON
(Lord Lytton)
IN this edition of a work composed in early youth, I have not attemptedto remove those faults of construction which may be sufficientlyapparent in the plot, but which could not indeed be thoroughly rectifiedwithout re-writing the whole work. I can only hope that with thedefects of inexperience may be found some of the merits of frank andartless enthusiasm. I have, however, lightened the narrative of certainepisodical and irrelevant passages, and relieved the general style ofsome boyish extravagances of diction. At the time this work was writtenI was deeply engaged in the study of metaphysics and ethics, and out ofthat study grew the character of Algernon Mordaunt. He is representedas a type of the Heroism of Christian Philosophy,—a union of love andknowledge placed in the midst of sorrow, and labouring on through thepilgrimage of life, strong in the fortitude that comes from belief inHeaven.
KNEBWORTH, May 3, 1852.
MY DEAR AULDJO,—Permit me, as a memento of the pleasant hours we passedtogether, and the intimacy we formed by the winding shores and the rosyseas of the old Parthenope, to dedicate to you this romance. It waswritten in perhaps the happiest period of my literary life,—whensuccess began to brighten upon my labours, and it seemed to me a finething to make a name. Reputation, like all possessions, fairer in thehope than the reality, shone before me in the gloss of novelty; and Ihad neither felt the envy it excites, the weariness it occasions, nor(worse than all) that coarse and painful notoriety, that, somethingbetween the gossip and the slander, which attends every man whosewritings become known,—surrendering the grateful privacies of life to
"The gaudy, babbling, and remorseless day."
In short, yet almost a boy (for, in years at least, I was little more,when "Pelham" and "The Disowned" were conceived and composed), and fullof the sanguine arrogance of hope, I pictured to myself far greatertriumphs than it will ever be mine to achieve: and never did architectof dreams build his pyramid upon (alas!) a narrower base, or a morecrumbling soil! . . . Time cures us effectually of these self-conceits,and brings us, somewhat harshly, from the gay extravagance ofconfounding the much that we design with the little that we canaccomplish.
"The Disowned" and "Devereux" were both completed in retirement, and inthe midst of metaphysical studies and investigations, varied andmiscellaneous enough, if not very deeply conned. At that time I wasindeed engaged in preparing for the press a Philosophical Work which Ihad afterwards the good sense to postpone to a riper age and a moresobered mind. But the effect of these studies is somewhat prejudiciallyvisible in both the romances I have referred to; and the external anddramatic colourings which belong to fiction are too often forsaken forthe inward and subtile analysis of motives, characters, and actions.The workman was not sufficiently master of his art to forbear the vanityof parading the wheels of the mechanism, and was too fond of callingattention to the minute and tedious operations by which the movementswere to be perf