should have failed to hear of it, if my book had been open to
exception on this ground.

An apology is perhaps due for the adoption of a pseudonym, and even
more so for the creation of two such characters as JOHN PICKARD OWEN
and his brother. Why could I not, it may be asked, have said all
that I had to say in my own proper person?

Are there not real ills of life enough already? Is there not a "lo
here!" from this school with its gushing "earnestness," it
distinctions without differences, its gnat strainings and camel
swallowings, its pretence of grappling with a question while
resolutely bent upon shirking it, its dust throwing and
mystification, its concealment of its own ineffable insincerity under
an air of ineffable candour? Is there not a "lo there!" from that
other school with its bituminous atmosphere of exclusiveness and
self-laudatory dilettanteism? Is there not enough actual exposition
of boredom come over us from many quarters without drawing for new
bores upon the imagination? It is true I gave a single drop of
comfort. JOHN PICKARD OWEN was dead. But his having ceased to exist
(to use the impious phraseology of the present day) did not cancel
the fact of his having once existed. That he should have ever been
born gave proof of potentialities in Nature which could not be
regarded lightly. What hybrids might not be in store for us next?
Moreover, though JOHN PICKARD was dead, WILLIAM BICKERSTETH was still
living, and might at any moment rekindle his burning and shining lamp
of persistent self-satisfaction. Even though the OWENS had actually
existed, should not their existence have been ignored as a disgrace
to Nature? Who then could be justified in creating them when they
did not exist?