localities. These errors were of such a character as to pass unnoticed by
the ordinary reader and disturb no one except the local archaeologist or
those who propose to the novelist that he shall combine the accuracy of the
historical scholar with the creative imagination of the writer of what,
after all, is fiction.

Nevertheless, the desire of the scientific mind even in the novel is for
all reasonable accuracy, and to attain it I used for six years such winter
leisures as the exacting duties of a busy professional life permitted, to
collect notes of the dress, hours, sports, habits and talk of the various
types of men and women I meant to delineate. I burned a hundred pages of
these carefully gathered materials soon after I had found time, in a summer
holiday, to write the book for which these notes were so industriously
gathered.

It is probable that no historical novel was ever paid the compliment of the
close criticism of details which greeted Hugh Wynne. I was most largely in
debt for the pointing out of errors in names and localities to a review of
my book in a journal devoted to the interest of one of the two divisions of
the Society of Friends.

I deeply regretted at the time that my useful critic should have considered
my novel as a deliberately planned attack on the views entertained by
Friends. It was once again an example of the assumption that the characters
of a novel in their opinions and talk represent the author's personal
beliefs. I was told by my critic that John Wynne is presented as "the type
of the typical character of the Friends." As well might Bishop Proudie be
considered as representative of the members and views of the Church of
England or Mr. Tulkinghorn of the English lawyer.