nd have delighted in the quaintness and _naivete_ of Chaucer, I
have refrained from reading more than a casual stanza or two of the
'Faery Queen.' When I lived at Beverley, Spenser was to me but a name,
and Byron's 'Childe Harold' was my only model for that exacting verse. I
should add that the Beverley Maecenas, when commissioning this volume of
verse, was less superb in his ideas than the literary patron of the
past. He looked at the matter from a purely commercial standpoint, and
believed that a volume of verse, such as I could produce, would pay--a
delusion on his part which I honestly strove to combat before accepting
his handsome offer of remuneration for my time and labour. It was with
this idea in his mind that he chose and insisted upon the Sicilian
campaign as a subject for my muse, and thus started me heavily
handicapped on the racecourse of Parnassus.

[Illustration: MISS BRADDON'S COTTAGE AT LYNDHURST]

The weekly number of 'Three Times Dead' was 'thrown off' in brief
intervals of rest from my _magnum opus_, and it was an infinite relief
to turn from Garibaldi and his brothers in arms to the angels and the
monsters which my own brain had engendered, and which to me seemed more
alive than the good great man whose arms I so laboriously sang. My
rustic pipe far better loved to sing of melodramatic poisoners and
ubiquitous detectives; of fine houses in the West of London, and dark
dens in the East. So the weekly chapter of my first novel ran merrily
off my pen while the printer's boy waited in the farmhouse kitchen.

Happy, happy days, so near to memory, and yet so far! In that peaceful
summer I finished my first novel, knocked Garibaldi on the head with a
closing rhapsody, saw the York spring and summer races in hopelessly wet
weather, learnt to love the Yorkshire people, and left Yorkshire almost
broken-heartedly on a dull, grey October morning, to travel Londonwards
through a landscape that was mostly under water.

[Illustration: MISS BRADDON'S INKSTAND]

And, behold, since that October morning I have written fifty-three
novels; I have lost dear old friends and found new friends, who are also
dear, but I have never looked on a Yorkshire landscape since I turned my
reluctant eyes from those level meadows and green lanes where the old
chestnut mare used to carry me ploddingly to and fro between tall,
tangled hedges of eglantine and honeysuckle.

[Illustration: signature: Very truly yours,

M. E. Braddon