BY RICHARD CUMBERLAND, ESQ. AUTHOR OF THE OBSERVER, ARUNDEL, CALVARY, &c. &c. IN FOUR VOLUMES. FOURTH EDITION. Ficta voluptatis causâ sint proxima veris, VOL II. LONDON: PRINTED FOR A. K. NEWMAN AND CO. LEADENHALL STREET. BOOK THE FOURTH. CHAPTER I. THE AUTHOR APPEALS TO HIS READERS. I SHALL now put in a few words, whilst my history pauses, touching what I claim from my readers, as a right, and what I hope and expect from them, as a favour. My claim is briefly this, credit in all cases for an honest meaning, or in other words, the best sense that a doubtful passage will bear: it is thus I have treated others, the same treatment I have a right now to claim from them. On the score of favour I am their suitor in the humblest sense, for I see so many imperfections starting up in my performance, which I cannot cure, and suspect there may be so many more, which possibly I shall not discover, that I have no notion of sending my sins into the world without one apology; I am not hardy enough to give in the account between my readers and myself, without the usual salvo of er VOL. II. B rors rors excepted.-"Take nature for your guide," says the critic; "follow her and you can't go wrong." True, most sagacious critic, I reply; but what is so difficult? Does the tragic poet always find her out; Does the comic writer never miss her haunts? Yet they profess to paint from nature, and no doubt they do their best: the outline may be true, but the least slip in filling it up mars the portrait; it demands a steady hand, a faithful eye, a watchful judgment, to make the likeness perfect; and grant it perfect, the author's work will gain no praise, unless it be pleasing also; for who opens a novel but in the expectation of being amused by it? "Let it be merry," says one, "for I love to laugh."-"Let it be pathetic," says a second, "for I have no objection to the melancholy tale that makes me weep."—" Let your characters be strongly marked," cries a third," your fable well imagined, and work it up with a variety of new and striking incidents, for I like to have my attention kept alive."-These and a hundred more are the demands, which one poor brain is to satisfy in a work of fancy; wit, humour, character, invention, genius are to be set to work together, fiction is to be combined with pro bability, novelty with nature, ridicule with good-humour, passion with morality, and pain with pleasure; every thing is to be natural, yet nothing common; animating but not inflammatory; interesting, but not incredible; in short, there must be every thing that judgment can plan and genius execute, to make the composition perfect: no man has done all this, and he, who has done most towards it, has still fallen very short of the whole. With all this consciousness about me, I yet do not despair but that the candid reader will find something in this fable to overbalance its miscarriages. I shall proceed as one, who knows his danger, but is not discouraged from his duty. These children of my fancy, whom I have brought into existence, I shall treat as they deserve, dealing out their portions of honour and dishonour as their conduct seems to call for it; and though some amongst them will probably persist in acting an evil part to the last, yet collectively they will leave no evil lesson behind them. As to our hero, if he has been so fortunate as to gain an interest in the good opinion of the reader in this period of his history, I am bold to hope he will not forfeit it in the suc |