ished it, that he prevailed upon them
to threaten me with criminal proceedings for having disposed of my own
work, and I accordingly received an attorney's letter, affording me
that very agreeable intimation. Of course they soon found they had been
misled, and that it would have been not only an unparalleled outrage,
but a matter attended with too much danger, and involving too severe a
penalty to proceed in. Little I knew or suspected at the time, however,
that the sinister and unscrupulous delusions which occasioned me and
my family so much trouble, vexation, and embarrassment, were only the
foreshadowings of that pitiable and melancholy malady which not long
afterwards occasioned the unhappy man to be placed apart from society,
which, it is to be feared, he is never likely to rejoin. I allude to
those matters, not only to account for the limited number of the work
that was printed, but to satisfy those London publishers to whom the
individual in question so foully misrepresented me, that my conduct in
every transaction I have had with booksellers has been straightforward,
just, and honorable, and that I can publicly make this assertion,
without the slightest apprehension of being contradicted. That the book
was cushioned in this country, I am fully aware, and this is all I
shall say upon that part of the subject. Indeed it was never properly
published at all--never advertised--never reviewed, and, until now, lay
nearly in as much obscurity as if it had been still in manuscript. A few
copies of it got into circulating libraries, but, in point of fact,
it was never placed before the public at all. What-ever be its merits,
however, it is now in the hands of a gentleman who will do it justice,
if it fails, the fault will not at least be his.

My object in writing the book was to exhibit, in contrast, three of the
most powerful passions that can agitate the human heart--I mean love,
ambition, and revenge. To contrive the successive incidents, by which
the respective individuals on whose characters they were to operate
should manifest their influence with adequate motives, and without
departing from actual life and nature, as we observe them in action
about us, was a task which required a very close study of the human mind
when placed in peculiar circumstances. In this case the great struggle
was between love and ambition. By ambition, I do not mean the ambition
of the truly great man, who wishes to associate it with truth