rose works have been so attacked as "Eugene Aram," none
have so completely triumphed over attack. It is true that, whether
from real or affected ignorance of the true morality of fiction, a few
critics may still reiterate the old commonplace charges of "selecting
heroes from Newgate," or "investing murderers with interest;" but the
firm hold which the work has established in the opinion of the general
public, and the favor it has received in every country where English
literature is known, suffice to prove that, whatever its faults, it
belongs to that legitimate class of fiction which illustrates life and
truth, and only deals with crime as the recognized agency of pity and
terror in the conduct of tragic narrative. All that I would say further
on this score has been said in the general defence of my writings which
I put forth two years ago; and I ask the indulgence of the reader if I
repeat myself:--

"Here, unlike the milder guilt of Paul Clifford, the author was not
to imply reform to society, nor open in this world atonement and
pardon to the criminal. As it would have been wholly in vain to
disguise, by mean tamperings with art and truth, the ordinary habits
of life and attributes of character which all record and remembrance
ascribed to Eugene Aram; as it would have defeated every end of the
moral inculcated by his guilt, to portray, in the caricature of the
murderer of melodrama, a man immersed in study, of whom it was noted
that he turned aside from the worm in his path,--so I have allowed
to him whatever contrasts with his inexpiable crime have been
recorded on sufficient authority. But I have invariably taken care
that the crime itself should stand stripped of every sophistry, and
hideous to the perpetrator as well as to the world. Allowing all by
which attention to his biography may explain the tremendous paradox
of fearful guilt in a man aspiring after knowledge, and not
generally inhumane; allowing that the crime came upon him in the
partial insanity produced by the combining circumstances of a brain
overwrought by intense study, disturbed by an excited imagination
and the fumes of a momentary disease of the reasoning faculty,
consumed by the desire of knowledge, unwholesome and morbid, because
coveted as an end, not a means, added to the other physical causes
of mental aberration to be found in loneliness, and want verging
upon famine,--a