Gentlemen,
You have been pleased to notice the Romance of “Montorio,” and I am grateful for the notice. This is my motive for dedicating the following pages to you.
In so doing we are perfectly quit. It is obviously the purpose of modern [ii] Reviewers to give you not the slightest idea of the work they profess to notice, but their own sentiments; they merely assume the title of the work as a motto for a political, theological, or belle-lettre Essay, (as the case may be), and the - "They write - good Gods! how they do write!"
The Present Dedication shall en suite be entirely devotedly to talking of myself.
I have written two Romances. The first I cannot help thinnking exhibits some power of imagination and description, but unfortunately they are exhausted on a subject so much beyond [iii] the reach of life, or the tone and compass of ordinary feeling, that I might as well have given a map of terra incognita, and expected the reader to swear to its boundaries, or live on its productions.
Solicitous about the public feeling (as all who write must be), I consulted the Reviewers: and what did they tell me: - that they were profound judges, but would pronounce no decision; that they were consummate critics, but would give no advice.
Seriously I read the Reviews for information, and information I could get none - about myself. All I learned was [iv] that I was a bad writer, but why, or how, or in what manner I was to become better, they graciously left to myself.
These men abuse the public much; that some of them possess talent is undoubted; but why not exercise it in their own right, without barrowing a pretext from an office they do not discharge? Why not become writers, instead of soi-disant Reviewers.
If I possess any talent, it is that of darkening the gloomy, of deepinging the sad; of painting life in extremes, and representing those struggles of passion when the soul trembles on the [v] verge of the unlawful and the unhallowed.
In the following pages I have tried to apply these powers to the scenes of actual life: and I have chosen my own country for the scene, because i believe it the only country on earth, where, from the existing opposition of religion, politics, and manners, the extremes of refinement and barbarism are united, and the most wild and incredible situations of romantic story are hourly passing before modern eyes.
In my first work I attempted to explore the ground forbidden to man; the sources of visionary terror; the "formless and the void:" in my present I havve [vi] tried the equally obscure recesses of the human heart. If I fail in both, I shall - write again.
