Page:A Bayard from Bengal.djvu/18

x Would no one arise, inflamed by the pure enthusiasm of his cacoethes scribendi, and write a romance which shall secure the plerophory of British, American, Anglo-Indian, Colonial, and Continental readers by dint of its imaginary power and slavish fidelity to Nature?

And since Echo answered that no one replied to this invitation, I (like a fool, as some will say) rushed in where angels were apprehensive of being too bulky to be borne.

Being naturally acquainted with gentlemen of my own nationality and education, and also, of course, knowing London and suburban society ab ovo usque ad mala (or, from the new-laid egg to the stage when it is beginning to go bad), I decided to take as my theme the adventures of a typically splendid representative of Young India on British soil, and I am in earnest hopes to avoid the shocking solecisms and exaggerations indulged in by ordinary English novelists.

I have been compelled to take to penmanship of this sort owing to pressure of res angusta