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SIR,—It has long been my ambition to add some humble tribute to theofferings laid upon the shrine of your genius. At each succeeding bookthat I have given to the world, I have paused to consider if it wereworthy to be inscribed with your great name, and at each I have playedthe procrastinator, and hoped for that morrow of better desert whichnever came. But 'defluat amnis',—the time runs on; and I am tired ofwaiting for the ford which the tides refuse. I seize, then, the presentopportunity, not as the best, but as the only one I can he sure ofcommanding, to express that affectionate admiration with which you haveinspired me in common with all your contemporaries, and which a Frenchwriter has not ungracefully termed "the happiest prerogative of genius."As a Poet and as a Novelist your fame has attained to that height inwhich praise has become superfluous; but in the character of the writerthere seems to me a yet higher claim to veneration than in that of thewritings. The example your genius sets us, who can emulate? The exampleyour moderation bequeaths to us, who shall forget? That nature mustindeed be gentle which has conciliated the envy that pursues intellectualgreatness, and left without an enemy a man who has no living equal inrenown.
You have gone for a while from the scenes you have immortalized, toregain, we trust, the health which has been impaired by your noble laborsor by the manly struggles with adverse fortunes which have not found theframe as indomitable as the mind. Take with you the prayers of all whomyour genius, with playful art, has soothed in sickness, or hasstrengthened, with generous precepts, against the calamities of life.
[Written at the time of Sir W. Scott's visit to Italy, after the
great blow to his health and fortunes.]
"Navis quae, tibi creditum
Debes Virgilium . . .
Reddas incolumem!"
"O ship, thou owest to us Virgil! Restore in
safety him whom we intrusted to thee."
You, I feel assured, will not deem it presumptuous in one who, to thatbright and undying flame which now streams from the gray hills ofScotland,—the last halo with which you have crowned her literaryglories,—has turned from his first childhood with a deep and unrelaxingdevotion; you, I feel assured, will not deem it presumptuous in him toinscribe an idle work with your illustrious name,—a work which, howeverworthless in itself, assumes something of value in his eyes when thusrendered a tribute of respect to you.
LONDON, December 22, 1831.
Since, dear Reader, I last addressed thee, in "Paul Clifford," nearly twoyears have elapsed, and somewhat more than four years since, in "Pelham,"our familiarity first began. The Tale which I now submit to thee differsequally from the last as from the first of those works; for of the twoevils, perhaps it is even better to disappoint thee in a new style thanto weary thee with an old. With the facts on which the tale of "EugeneAram" is founded, I have exercised the common and fair license of writersof fiction it is