TO THE UNFORTUNATE READER.
[figure description] Preface.[end figure description]
In this little Extravaganza, I have done just what
I intended.
I have attempted to describe, in an auto-biographical
sort of way, a well-meaning, but somewhat
vain young gentleman, who, having flirted desperately
with the Magazines, takes it into his silly head
to write a novel, all the chapters of which are laid
before the reader, with some running criticism by
T. James Barescythe, Esquire, the book-noticer of
“The Morning Glory,” (“a journal devoted to the
Fine Arts and the Amelioration of all Mankind,”) and
the type of a certain class which need not be distinctly
specified for recognition. I have endeavored to make
the novel of my literary hero such a one as a young
man with fine taste and crude talent might produce;
and I think I have succeeded. It is certainly sufficiently
unfinished.
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In drawing the character of Barescythe, the point
of my quill may have pierced a friend; and if you
ask, like Ludovico,
“What shall be said of thee?”
I shall answer, like Othello,
“Why, anything:
An honorable murderer, if you will;
For nought I did in hate, but all in honor.”
The only audacious thing I have done is the writing
of this preface. If there is anything more stupid
than a “preface,” it is a book-critic. If anything
could be more stupid than a book-critic, it would
be a preface. But, thank heaven, there is not.
In saying this, I refer to a particular critic; for
I would not, for the sake of a tenth edition, malign
in such a wholesale manner those capital good
fellows of the press—those verbal accoucheurs who
are so pleasantly officious at the birth of each new
genius. Not I. I have
“A fellow-feeling”
and a love for them, which would seem like a bid for
their good nature, if expressed here.
I have put my name on the title-page of this
trifle from principle. My pen-children are all mine,
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and I cannot think of disowning one, though it may
happen to be born hump-backed. But I beg of you,
gentlest of unfortunate readers, not to take Daisy's
Necklace as a serious exponent of my skill at story-telling.
It is not printed at the “urgent request of
numerous friends”—I am so fortunate as not to have
many—but a seductive little argument in the shape of
a cheque is the sole cause of its present form; otherwise,
I should be content to let it die an easy death
in the columns of the journal which first had the temerity
to publish it. If the world could always
know, as it may in this case, why a book is printed, it
would look with kindlier eyes on dullness bound in
muslin. It would say, with honest Sancho Panza:
“Let us not look the gift-horse in the mouth.”
When the sunshine of this dear old world has
reddened the wine in my heart—melted down its
sparkles to a creamy flavor, I will give you a richer
draught—mayhap a beaker of Hippocrene.
Till then, may God's blessing be on us both, though
neither of us deserve it.
Clinton Place, 1856.
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Aldrich, Thomas Bailey, 1836-1907 [1857], Daisy's necklace: and what came of it (A literary episode). (Derby & Jackson, New York) [word count] [eaf446T].
