Page:Paul Clifford Vol 1.djvu/18

 talent of any sort, to make it possible that I may stumble in a light fiction upon some amusing, perhaps even some useful truths; while neither the reading, nor the observation, nor the reflection, nor the talent, are in all probability sufficient to entitle me to a momentary notice in any graver and more presuming composition. Then, too, I fancy at those "post-prandial hours," when a certain self-complacency diffuses its cheering caloric over the mind,I fancy that I have also by accident stricken out a vein not so wholly hacknied, as that any of my immediate cotemporaries share the possession with myself: for the philosophical novel is at present not only little cultivated in any shape, but those who do break up the unpromising soil, are writers essentially grave and didactic. Such is the graceful and all-accomplished author of "De Vere;" or the fine creator of "St. Leon" and "Mandeville," to whose style may be applied the simile applied somewhat too flatteringly to that of Tertullian—that it is like ebony, at once dark and splendid. The novel, blending chiefly the comic, and occasionally the dramatic qualities with those of the reflective and analysing, is that which (except in "Devereux") I have sought out as the province of my own attempts; and in avoiding a competition with the distinguished writers I have just referred to, I aimed originally at prudence, and gained perhaps something of novelty.

You will observe that I have laid a stress on the words immediate cotemporaries, for I do not deceive myself with