PREFACE TO GODOLPHIN.

In the Prefaces to this edition of my works, I have occasionally so far
availed myself of that privilege of self-criticism which the French comic
writer, Mons. Picord, maintains or exemplifies in the collection of his
plays,--as, if not actually to sit in judgment on my own performances,
still to insinuate some excuse for their faults by extenuatory depositions
as to their character and intentions. Indeed, a writer looking back to
the past is unconsciously inclined to think that he may separate himself
from those children of his brain which have long gone forth to the world;
and though he may not expatiate on the merits his paternal affection would
ascribe to them, that he may speak at least of the mode in which they were
trained and reared--of the hopes he cherished, or the objects he
entertained, when he finally dismissed them to the opinions of others and
the ordeal of Fate or Time.

For my part, I own that even when I have thought but little of the value
of a work, I have always felt an interest in the author's account of its
origin and formation, and, willing to suppose that what thus affords a
gratification to my own curiosity, may not be wholly unattractive to
others, I shall thus continue from time to time to play the Showman to my
own machinery, and explain the principle of the mainspring and the
movement of the wheels.

This novel was begun somewhere in the third year of my authorship, and
completed in the fourth. It was, therefore, composed almost
simultaneously with Eugene Aram, and afforded to me at least some relief
from the gloom of that village tragedy. It is needless to observe how
dissimilar in point of scene, character, and fable, the one is from the
other; yet they are alike in this--that both attempt to deal with one of