Page:Tales of humour and romance translated by Holcroft.djvu/13

 PREFACE- v

no lack of ore and of sterling quality too, to meet the

demands of all who are qualified to draw upon it Kites,

I suppose, works of imagination."

" To be serious, they are prose works of fiction by some of their most approved authors."

" Oh then you mean to publish them."

" Why to be sure, authors are like mothers, they are not the first to see the faults of their own offspring ; but methinks the tales are as good as many that have been given to the world, and although, as you know, they have been translated by one who has lived more in the bustle of the world than in the stillness of the closet, I hope that, besides being correct transcripts, they are not altogether destitute of the spirit of the originals. The object I have in view if I publish them, will be to give some notion of the style of the novel writers of Germany."

" But my dear Dick," taking up one or two of the papers and turning over the pages of them, " you can never expect to s-ive an idea of a novel-writer by such short specimens as these."

" In my opinion, Tom, it requires no lengthy nar- rative to give an idea of a peculiar and individual style, although I must confess that to give a correct notion of the strength, variety, and power of an author's intellect and imagination, something more detailed than those. would be requisite ; and while I presume that the style of these various writers would be illustrated by the pub- lication of these manuscripts, I could never once ima- gine that the varied powers of their mind and their fancy