THE LAST OF THE BARONS

by Edward Bulwer Lytton




DEDICATORY EPISTLE.

I dedicate to you, my indulgent Critic and long-tried Friend, the work
which owes its origin to your suggestion. Long since, you urged me to
attempt a fiction which might borrow its characters from our own
Records, and serve to illustrate some of those truths which History is
too often compelled to leave to the Tale-teller, the Dramatist, and
the Poet. Unquestionably, Fiction, when aspiring to something higher
than mere romance, does not pervert, but elucidate Facts. He who
employs it worthily must, like a biographer, study the time and the
characters he selects, with a minute and earnest diligence which the
general historian, whose range extends over centuries, can scarcely be
expected to bestow upon the things and the men of a single epoch. His
descriptions should fill up with colour and detail the cold outlines
of the rapid chronicler; and in spite of all that has been argued by
pseudo-critics, the very fancy which urged and animated his theme
should necessarily tend to increase the reader's practical and
familiar acquaintance with the habits, the motives, and the modes of
thought which constitute the true idiosyncrasy of an age. More than
all, to Fiction is permitted that liberal use of Analogical Hypothesis
which is denied to History, and which, if sobered by research, and
enlightened by that knowledge of mankind (without which Fiction can
neither harm nor profit, for it becomes unreadable), tends to clear up