those children of his brain which have long
gone forth to the world; and though he may not expatiate on the merits
his paternal affection would ascribe to them, that he may speak at
least of the mode in which they were trained and reared--of the hopes he
cherished, or the objects he entertained, when he finally dismissed them
to the opinions of others and the ordeal of Fate or Time.

For my part, I own that even when I have thought but little of the value
of a work, I have always felt an interest in the author's account of its
origin and formation, and, willing to suppose that what thus affords
a gratification to my own curiosity, may not be wholly unattractive to
others, I shall thus continue from time to time to play the Showman to
my own machinery, and explain the principle of the mainspring and the
movement of the wheels.

This novel was begun somewhere in the third year of my authorship,
and completed in the fourth. It was, therefore, composed almost
simultaneously with Eugene Aram, and afforded to me at least some relief
from the gloom of that village tragedy. It is needless to observe how
dissimilar in point of scene, character, and fable, the one is from the
other; yet they are alike in this--that both attempt to deal with one
of the most striking problems in the spiritual history of man, viz.,
the frustration or abuse of power in a superior intellect originally
inclined to good. Perhaps there is no problem that more fascinates the
attention of a man of some earnestness at that period of his life, when
his eye first disengages itself from the external phenomena around him,
and his curiosity leads him to examine the cause and account for the
effect;--when, to cite reverently the words of the wisest, "He applies
his heart to know and to search, and to seek out wisdom and the reason
of things, and to know the wickedness of folly, even of foolishness and
madness."

In Eugene Aram, the natural career of genius is arrested by a single
crime; in Godolphin, a mind of inferior order, but more fanciful
colouring, is wasted away by the indulgence of those morbid sentiments
which are the nourishment of egotism, and the gradual influence of the
frivolities which make the business of the idle. Here the Demon tempts
or destroys the hermit in his solitary cell. There, he glides amidst the
pomps and vanities of the world, and whispers away the soul in the voice
of his soft familiars, Indolence and Pleasure.

Of all my numero