The Project Gutenberg EBook of Heart and Science, by Wilkie Collins

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Title: Heart and Science
A Story of the Present Time

Author: Wilkie Collins

Release Date: April, 2005 [EBook #7892]
Posting Date: July 29, 2009

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HEART AND SCIENCE ***

Produced by James Rusk

HEART AND SCIENCE

A Story of the Present Time

By Wilkie Collins

TO

SARONY

(OF NEW YORK)

ARTIST; PHOTOGRAPHER,

AND

GOOD FRIEND

I. PREFACE TO READERS IN GENERAL

You are the children of Old Mother England, on both sides of the
Atlantic; you form the majority of buyers and borrowers of novels; and
you judge of works of fiction by certain inbred preferences, which but
slightly influence the other great public of readers on the continent of
Europe.

The two qualities in fiction which hold the highest rank in your
estimation are: Character and Humour. Incident and dramatic situation
only occupy the second place in your favour. A novel that tells no
story, or that blunders perpetually in trying to tell a story--a novel
so entirely devoid of all sense of the dramatic side of human life,
that not even a theatrical thief can find anything in it to steal--will
nevertheless be a work that wins (and keeps) your admiration, if it has
Humour which dwells on your memory, and characters which enlarge the
circle of your friends.

I have myself always tried to combine the different merits of a good
novel, in one and the same work; and I have never succeeded in keeping
an equal balance. In the present story you will find the scales
inclining, on the whole, in favour of character and Humour. This has not
happened accidentally.

Advancing years, and health that stands sadly in need of improvement,
warn me--if I am to vary my way of work--that I may have little time
to lose. Without waiting for future opportunities, I have kept your
standard of merit more constantly before my mind, in writing this book,
than on some former occasions.

Still persisting in telling you a story--still refusing to get up in the
pulpit and preach, or to invade the platform and lecture, or to