University of Virginia Library

PREFACE.

I profess to give my readers a novel. That is, something
new. And I will give them something new; notwithstanding
we are truly told that “there is nothing
new under the sun”—and it might be added, neither is
the sun new.

These seeming contradictions are perhaps thus to be
reconciled: that although all is old—in nature a mere
repetition of a rising sun in the east and a setting sun in
the west—a spring, a summer, an autumn, and a winter,
going their rounds yearly, in most habitable countries;
and that, in literature, it is “a pouring out of one
vessel into another:”—yet, as the successive generation
of individuals, or nations, come into existence,
that, which is of itself old, is to them new.

Nay, to the same individual, that sun, so often seen,
is daily varied by situation in the firmament, and presents
every hour a new face, as the mist or the cloud
changes the medium through which we behold him: so
the landscape, although seen every day, is never the
same, either in appearance or reality. The truths or
falsehoods of literature, although the same materials
may be apparently poured from “one vessel into another,”
produce novelty by the mixture; for each operator
has a different mode of mingling the ingredients

of the chalice, and the materials themselves are sometimes
chemically changed, as it were, into something
unknown before. Thus although all is old; all is new,
in some degree, to every one; and to the uninstructed
in the full extent.

So much to prove that a novel may be new—now to
show that although it is a fiction, it may be true.

A novel is in its very nature a falsehood; yet if its
author has the welfare of his fellow-creatures at heart,
its substance and essence will be truth.

A Fable has been defined, “a feigned story intended
to enforce some precept;” and a parable is said to be
“a relation under which something else is feigned.”
But they are the same. They are both feigned stories,
which ought to enforce truth: they are both “relations
under which something else is feigned.” And such is
a novel.

The author of the best code of moral law presented
to man, taught many of his precepts by parables. He
knew that he must attract and hold the attention, before
he could instruct.

A learned Divine once said, “When I see my congregation
inclined to sleep, which sometimes happens
of an afternoon, I could wish to read a novel to them
instead of a sermon. Or, almost, to see a stage erected
in my church, and a `Morality' enacted, to awaken
them to the truths I am in vain presenting from the
pulpit.” We learn from this, that the exertion of intellect
necessary for receiving instruction is easier made
when fasting than full—or, at least, that temperance
facilitates thought.