Page:The Last Days of Pompeii - Bulwer-Lytton - Volume 1.djvu/14

 attractive to a modern reader;—the customs and superstitions least unfamiliar to him—the shadows that, when reanimated, would present to him such images as, while they represented the past, might be least uninteresting to the speculations of the present. It did, indeed, require a greater self- control than the reader may at first imagine, to reject much that was most inviting in itself; but which, while it might have added attraction to parts of the work, would have been injurious to the symmetry of the whole. Thus, for instance, the date of my story is that of the short reign of Titus, when Rome was at its proudest and most gigantic eminence of unbridled luxury and unrivalled power. It was, therefore, a most inviting temptation to the author, to conduct the characters of his tale, during the progress of its incidents, from Pompeii to Rome. What could afford such materials for description, or such field for the vanity of display, as that gorgeous City of the world, whose grandeur could lend so bright an inspiration to fancy,—so favourable and so solemn a dignity to research? But, in choosing for my subject—my catastrophe, The Destruction of Pompeii, it required but little insight into the