obligation on this head is to Mr. Boyle, the author of some admirable
letters to the Daily telegraph, which he afterwards reprinted in a
delightful volume. Mr. Boyle has a painter's eye, and a writer's pen,
and if the African scenes in "A Simpleton" please my readers, I hope
they will go to the fountain-head, where they will find many more.

As to the plot and characters, they are invented.

The title, "A Simpleton," is not quite new. There is a French
play called La Niaise. But La Niaise is in reality a woman of rare
intelligence, who is taken for a simpleton by a lot of conceited fools,
and the play runs on their blunders, and her unpretending wisdom. That
is a very fine plot, which I recommend to our female novelists. My aim
in these pages has been much humbler, and is, I hope, too clear to need
explanation.

CHARLES READE.




A SIMPLETON.




CHAPTER I.


A young lady sat pricking a framed canvas in the drawing-room of Kent