stirring than the contrasts of society? the mixture of slang and
fashionable language? the escapes, the battles, the murders? Nay, up to
nine o'clock this very morning, my poor friend, Colonel Altamont, was
doomed to execution, and the author only relented when his victim was
actually at the window.

The 'exciting' plan was laid aside (with a very honourable forbearance on
the part of the publishers), because, on attempting it, I found that I
failed from want of experience of my subject; and never having been
intimate with any convict in my life, and the manners of ruffians and
gaol-birds being quite unfamiliar to me, the idea of entering into
competition with M. Eugene Sue was abandoned. To describe a real rascal,
you must make him so horrible that he would be too hideous to show; and
unless the painter paints him fairly, I hold he has no right to show him
at all.

Even the gentlemen of our age--this is an attempt to describe one of
them, no better nor worse than most educated men--even these we cannot
show as they are, with the notorious foibles and selfishness of their
lives and their education. Since the author of Tom Jones was buried, no
writer of fiction among us has been permitted to depict to his utmost
power a MAN. We must drape him, and give him a certain conventional
simper. Society will not tolerate the Natural in our Art. Many ladies
have remonstrated and subscribers left me, because, in the course of the
story, I described a young man resisting and affected by temptation.

My object was to say, that he had the passions to feel, and the manliness
and generosity to overcome them. You will not hear--it is best to know
it--what moves in the real world, what passes in society, in the clubs,
colleges, mess-rooms,--what is the life and talk of your sons. A little