University of Virginia Library

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PREFACE.

PREFACE.

I have long entertained a suspicion, all that has been
said by the novel-writers and dramatists and poets of our
age to the contrary notwithstanding, that personal beauty
and intellectual beauty, or personal beauty and moral
beauty, are not inseparably connected with, nor apportioned
to each other. In Errata, a work of which as a
work, I am heartily ashamed now, I labored long and
earnestly to prove this. I made my dwarf a creature of
great moral beauty and strength.

Godwin, the powerful energetic and philosophizing
Godwin, saw a shadow of this truth; but he saw nothing
more—the substance escaped him. He taught, and he
has been followed by others, among whom are Brown,
Scott and Byron, (I observe the chronological order)
that a towering intellect may inhabit a miserable body;
that heroes are not of necessity six feet high, nor of a
godlike shape, and that we may be deceived, if we venture
to judge of the inward by the outward man. But
they stopped here. They did not perceive, or perceiving,
would not acknowledge the whole truth; for if we consider
a moment, we find that all their great men are
scoundrels. Without one exception I believe, their heroes
are hypocrites or misanthropes, banditti or worse;
while their good men are altogether subordinate and
pitiable destitute of energy and wholly without character.

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iv

Now believing as I do, in spite of such overwhelming
authority, that a man may have a club-foot, or a
hump-back, or even red hair and yet be a good man—
peradventure a great man; that a dwarf with a distorted
shape may be a giant in goodness of heart and greatness
of temper; and that moral beauty may exist where
it appears not to have been suspected by the chief critics
of our age, and of past ages—namely, in a deformed
body (like that of æsop,) I have written this book.

Let me add however that although such was my principal,
it was not my only object. I would call the attention
of our novel-writers and our novel-readers to
what is undoubtedly native and peculiar, in the early
history of our Fathers; I would urge them to believe
that though there is much to lament in that history,
there is nothing to conceal; that if they went astray, as
they most assuredly did in their judgments, they went
astray conscientiously, with what they understood to be
the law of God in their right hands. The “Salem Tragedie”
is in proof—that is the ground-work of my story;
and I pray the reader to have patience with the author,
if he should find this tale rather more serious in parts, and
rather more argumentative in parts, than stories, novels
and romances generally are.

I do not pretend to say that the book I now offer to
my countrymen, is altogether such a book as I would
write now, if I had more leisure, nor altogether such a
book as I hope to write before I die; but as I cannot afford
to throw it entirely away, and as I believe it to be
much better, because more evidently prepared for a
healthy good purpose, than any other I have written, I
have concluded to publish it—hoping it may be regarded
by the wise and virtuous of our country as some sort
of atonement for the folly and extravagance of my
earlier writing.

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v

The skeleton of this tale was originally prepared for
Blackwood, as the first of a series of North-American
Stories: He accepted it, paid for it, printed it, and sent
me the proofs. A misunderstanding however occurred
between us, about other matters, and I withdrew the
story and repaid him for it. It was never published
therefore; but was put aside by me, as the frame-work
for a novel—which novel is now before the reader.