RANTHORPE.

4162

J'avais entrepris une lutte insensée; je combattais la misère avec ma plume.

H DE BALZAC.

Wie verfährt die Natur, um Hohes und Niedres im Menschen
Sie stellt Eitelkeit zwischen hinein !

Zu verbinden?

GOTHE.

LONDON:
CHAPMAN AND HALL, 186, STRAND.

MDCCCXLVII.

828
26712

C. WHITING, BEAUFORT HOUSE, STRAND.

TO HER

WHO HAS LIGHTENED THE BURDEN OF AN ANXIOUS LIFE,

THIS WORK IS INSCRIBED BY

HER HUSBAND.

PREFACE.

RANTHORPE was written five years ago.

No one will doubt that it has in many respects profited by the delay in publication; yet it has not escaped the evil of that tendency,

To add and alter many times,
Till all be ripe and rotten,

So

of which the most fastidious of contemporary poets complains; and which made Schiller question the advantage of Horace's celebrated nonum prematur in annum. that when I state that the one volume now presented to the public was originally three, the critic will easily understand how certain faults of construction, and sins against l'art de conter, arose from so great a change in the structure and proportions of the whole. Of these faults I became aware only when too late-when reading the proof sheets ; and all which now remains is to confess and apologise.