CHAP. BOOK THE FOURTH. HENRY. 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 cafes for an honest meaning, or in other words, the beft fenfe that a doubtful paffage will bear: it is thus I have treated others, the fame treatment I have a right now to claim from them. On the score of favour I am their fuitor in the humbleft fenfe, for I fee fo many imperfections starting up in my performance, which I cannot cure, and suspect there may be fo many more, which poffibly I fhall not discover, that I have no notion of fending my fins into the world without one apology; I am not hardy enough to give in the account between my readers and myself, without the ufual falvo of erVOL. II. B rors rors excepted." Take Nature for your guide," fays the critic; "follow her and you can't go wrong." True, moft fagacious critic, I reply; but what is fo difficult? Does the tragic poet always find her out? Does the comic writer never mifs her haunts? Yet they profefs to paint from nature, and no doubt they do their beft: the outline may be true, but the leaft flip in filling it up mars the portrait; it demands a steady hand, a faithful eye, a watchful judgment, to make the likenefs perfect; and grant it perfect, the author's work will gain no praise, unless it be pleasing alfo; for who opens a novel but in the expectation of being amused by it? "Let it be merry," fays one, " for I love to laugh."-" Let it be pathetic," fays a fecond, "for I have no objection to the melancholy tale that makes me weep ;"-" Let your characters be ftrongly 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 fatisfy in a work of fancy; wit, humour, character, invention, genius, are to be fet to work together, fiction is to be combined with probal ility, 4 bability, novelty with nature, ridicule with good-humour, paffion with morality, and pain with pleasure; every thing is to be natural, yet nothing common; animating, but not inflammatory; interefting, but not incredible; in fhort, there must be every thing that judgment can plan and genius execute, to make the compofition perfect: no man has done all this, and he, who has done moft towards it, has still fallen very short of the whole. With all this confcioufnefs about me, I yet do not defpair but that the candid reader will find something in this fable to overbalance its mifcarriages. I fhall proceed as one, who knows his danger, but is not difcouraged from his duty. These children of my fancy, whom I have brought into existence, I shall treat as they deferve, dealing out their portions of honour and difhonour as their conduct feems to call for it; and though fome amongst them will probably persist in acting an evil part to the last, yet collectively they will leave no evil leffon behind them. As to our hero, if he has been fo fortunate as to gain an intereft 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 fucceeding B 2 |