It has been my aim to subdue and tone down the persons introduced, and
the general agencies of the narrative, into the lights and shadows of
life as it is. I do not mean by "life as it is," the vulgar and the
outward life alone, but life in its spiritual and mystic as well as its
more visible and fleshly characteristics. The idea of not only
describing, but developing character under the ripening influences of
time and circumstance, is not confined to the apprenticeship of
Maltravers alone, but pervades the progress of Cesarini, Ferrers, and
Alice Darvil.

The original conception of Alice is taken from real life--from a person
I never saw but twice, and then she was no longer young--but whose
history made on me a deep impression. Her early ignorance and home--her
first love--the strange and affecting fidelity that she maintained, in
spite of new ties--her final re-meeting, almost in middle-age, with one
lost and adored almost in childhood--all this, as shown in the novel, is
but the imperfect transcript of the true adventures of a living woman.

In regard to Maltravers himself, I must own that I have but inadequately
struggled against the great and obvious difficulty of representing an
author living in our own times, with whose supposed works or alleged
genius and those of any one actually existing, the reader can establish
no identification, and he is therefore either compelled constantly to
humour the delusion by keeping his imagination on the stretch, or lazily
driven to confound the Author /in/ the Book with the Author /of/ the
Book.* But I own, also, I fancied, while aware of this objection, and in
spite of it, that so much not hitherto said might be conveyed with
advantage through the lips or in the life of an imaginary writer of our
own time, that I was contented, on the whole, either to task the
imagination, or submit to the suspicions of the reader. All that my own