Page:Stories after Nature.pdf/19

Rh illustrated and of similar literary character—the Illustrated Family Journal and the Illuminated Magazine, of which last I succeeded to Douglas Jerrold as editor. I could find no better material, whether as stories or as fit for illustration, than these Stories so lately come into my possession; and I printed some seven or eight of them, with designs by the younger Pickersgill. I think it was through the son of Hazlitt (the critic and essayist) that these reprints came to the knowledge of Wells, then living idly in Brittany. He wrote to thank me, and sent me in manuscript two other tales that had not been printed: Claribel (here added to the 1822 series), which I was very glad to use, and a second, which seemed to me not suitable for the magazine, and which I returned to him. I have always been sorry for not having printed it, it was so powerfully written: a ghastly tale of revenge, the revenge of a man who, trapping his wife with a lover, fastened them into their room and left them to starve, years afterward