to Second Edition 



sional hints and inuendoes not conspicuous enough to 

 frighten the careless skimmer) he hoped would be at once 

 perceived and understood by the critic as illustrations of his 

 modified original scheme. 



It appears he was mistaken. His manner of relating 

 real and imaginary events is accused by the reviewers as so 

 uniform, that they were unsuspiciously led at first to believe 

 several cock-and-bull stories, which the Author a few pages 

 subsequent confesses to be such ; and they are afterwards 

 led to disbelieve other stories which they cannot satisfac- 

 torily make out whether he means to vouch for or discredit. 

 The real mistake was not having made a general prefatory 

 confession (which nobody would have read), a fault he is 

 now rectifying in the second edition, by a candid avowal 

 which will, at any rate, ease his literary conscience ; and if, 

 as he hopes, no one reads it before reading the book, it will 

 do no harm. Towards this desirable end he has made his 

 preface rather long and tedious ; and is now about to hide 

 his confessions in the midst of an interminable paragraph. 

 The first idea of the scheme of the work arose from the 

 scene in the water-colour shop (p. 45). The first instance of 

 pure invention is the Legend of Beaucaire (p. 52). Then 

 • there is that terrible catastrophe of the slaughtered robber, 

 which is true up to the point of hearing the pistol report in 

 the dehesa, and the Author's imagination accounting for the 

 report (p. 122). "Still the shot had to be accounted for. 

 Has your imagination prepared you for something dreadful ? 

 Mine had ! Something like what follows.^'' Observe, only 

 something like^ and all those italics to put the wary reader 

 on his guard. In the original draught this letter was fol- 

 lowed by a postscript, exposing the many points of extreme 

 improbability which the most casual reader must detect in 

 the story, and explaining the fact, which was thus : — In his 



37 



