Page:Blanchard on L. E. L.pdf/82

82 so completely to their ways. Certainly they will suit no one else—and oh the horror of having to adopt a complete set of new habits! Might one not wish that there were no strangers in the world? Then to return to Hans-place itself! How very contre cœur that will be! A familiar place with new faces sets the teeth of all one's remembrances on edge."

It was during her earlier intimacy with Mrs. Hall, and perhaps influenced by her judgment and advice, that L. E. L. resolved to devote herself seriously to a long-talked-of project—the production of a novel. If there was much to gain, there was something to risk by the attempt. Airy and animated sketches of character, pointed dialogue, richly-coloured descriptions, imagination thrusting out matter of fact when most wanted; in short, digressions of extreme beauty, and without number, were to be looked for by all who knew anything of the qualities of the new novelist; but for the combination of all the principles that enter into a complete character, for the construction of a story, and the skill to conduct it to a triumphant close, her capacity was yet to be tried. She evaded the experiment in "Romance and Reality." This first prose work of L. E. L.'s was commenced—probably without any settled plan—in 1830, and, in the following year, it was published.

A note to the first edition of "Romance and Reality," apologizing for mistakes, contains a confession of carelessness in composition which might not inaccurately be applied to most of L. E. L.'s writings, and to all her earlier works. As an example of it, she admits that, "but for the care of 'the readers' connected with the press through which these pages have passed, both heroine and