ich,
taken as a novel, you would more decisively and unblushingly prefix that
voucher of personal authorship and identity conveyed in the monosyllable
'My.' And if you have written your best, let it be ever so bad, what can
any man of candour and integrity require more from you? Perhaps you will
say that, if you had lived two thousand years ago, you might have called
it 'The Novel,' or the 'Golden Novel,' as Lucius called his story 'The
Ass;' and Apuleius, to distinguish his own more elaborate Ass from all
Asses preceding it, called his tale 'The Golden Ass.' But living in the
present day, such a designation--implying a merit in general, not
the partial and limited merit corresponding only with your individual
abilities--would be presumptuous and offensive. True, I here anticipate
the observation I see Squills is about to make--"

SQUILLS.--"I, Sir?"

MR. CAXTON.--"You would say that, as Scarron called his work of fiction
'The Comic Novel,' so Pisistratus might have called his 'The Serious
Novel,' or 'The Tragic Novel.' But, Squills, that title would not have
been inviting nor appropriate, and would have been exposed to comparison
with Scarron, who being dead is inimitable. Wherefore--to put the
question on the irrefragable basis of mathematics--wherefore as A B 'My
Novel' is not equal to B C 'The Golden Novel,' nor to D E 'The Serious
or Tragic Novel,' it follows that A B 'My Novel' is equal to P C
'Pisistratus Caxton,' and P C 'Pisistratus Caxton' must therefore be
just equal, neither more nor less, to A B 'My Novel,'--which was to be
demonstrated." My father looked round triumphantly, and observing that
Squills was dumfounded, and the rest of his audience posed, he added
mildly,

"And so now, 'non quieta movere,' proceed with the Final Chapter, and
tell us first what became of that youthful Giles Overreach, who was
himself his own Marrall?"

"Ay," said the captain, "what became of Randal Leslie? Did he repent and
reform?"

"Nay," quoth my father, with a mournful shake of the head, "you can
regulate the warm tide of wild passion, you can light into virtue the
dark errors of ignorance; but where the force of the brain does but clog
the free action of the heart, where you have to deal, not with ignorance
misled, but intelligence corrupted, small hope of reform; for reform
here will need re-organization. I have somewhere read (perhaps in Hebrew
tradition) that of the two orders of fallen spirits,--the Angels of Lov