University of Virginia Library

PREFACE.

CRITIC.—I never read a more improbable story in my life.

AUTHOR.—Notwithstanding, it may be true.

NOTE TO THE SECOND EDITION.

THREE or four weeks after the publication of "Ginx's Baby,'' the Author is called upon by the Publishers to revise it for a Second Edition. In this notoriety of the fortunes of "Ginx's Baby,'' the most deep and real satisfaction comes from the general recognition of the sincere and earnest purpose of the history. This sufficiently neutralizes the misunderstandings or misjudgments of some two or three critics.

To those who have criticised the book in the modern fashion, the Author has only most gently to deprecate that they should have felt themselves constrained to make objections when they obviously

had none to make. To take an instance: one not unkindly critic declares that the Author "OFTEN mistakes invective for satire''—a remark so paradoxical as to require solution. The Author is conscious of having deliberately used both invective and satire, but the error of confounding them he returns to the critic. The same judge observes:— "The only man described in the book who has any indefinite (quære, definite?) remedies to propose for the diseases of modern civilization is a generous-hearted fanatic rather than a judicious statesman;'' and he records his suspicion that Sir Charles Sterling's most impracticable suggestions are "especially dear to the Author.'' Did it not occur to the critic that the Author intended to represent in Sir Charles Sterling a "generous-hearted fanatic,'' and that his intention is clearly written on every page of the baronet's exaggerated talk? A man made an enthusiast by too keen a sensitiveness to wrong and sorrow is not an unnatural or unadmirable character; nay, much wisdom may play brightly through the thunder-clouds of his passion.

Lastly, the Author desires to set himself right with the Reader on one point in which it seems he is likely to be misunderstood. The Editor of the Spectator, otherwise applauding, had referred to the passage on the "Timbuctoo question,'' pp. 207-8, as "utterly and basely wrong.'' In the Spectator of June 4th appeared the following letter from the Author; commending which to his Readers and Critics, he confides to their consciences the Second Edition.