Devereux | Page 3

that these our books are a part of us, bone of our
bone and flesh of our flesh! They treasure up the thoughts which stirred
us, the affections which warmed us, years ago; they are the mirrors of
how much of what we were! To the world they are but as a certain
number of pages,--good or bad,--tedious or diverting; but to ourselves,
the authors, they are as marks in the wild maze of life by which we can
retrace our steps, and be with our youth again. What would I not give to
feel as I felt, to hope as I hoped, to believe as I believed, when this
work was first launched upon the world! But time gives while it takes
away; and amongst its recompenses for many losses are the memories I

referred to in commencing this letter, and gratefully revert to at its close.
From the land of cloud and the life of toil, I turn to that golden clime
and the happy indolence that so well accords with it; and hope once
more, ere I die, with a companion whose knowledge can recall the past
and whose gayety can enliven the present, to visit the Disburied City of
Pompeii, and see the moonlight sparkle over the waves of Naples.
Adieu, my dear Auldjo,
And believe me, Your obliged and attached friend, E. B. LYTTON.

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHER'S INTRODUCTION.
MY life has been one of frequent adventure and constant excitement. It
has been passed, to this present day, in a stirring age, and not without
acquaintance of the most eminent and active spirits of the time. Men of
all grades and of every character have been familiar to me. War, love,
ambition, the scroll of sages, the festivals of wit, the intrigues of
states,--all that agitate mankind, the hope and the fear, the labour and
the pleasure, the great drama of vanities, with the little interludes of
wisdom; these have been the occupations of my manhood; these will
furnish forth the materials of that history which is now open to your
survey. Whatever be the faults of the historian, he has no motive to
palliate what he has committed nor to conceal what he has felt.
Children of an after century, the very time in which these pages will
greet you destroys enough of the connection between you and myself to
render me indifferent alike to your censure and your applause. Exactly
one hundred years from the day this record is completed will the seal I
shall place on it be broken and the secrets it contains be disclosed. I
claim that congeniality with you which I have found not among my
own coevals. /Their/ thoughts, their feelings, their views, have nothing
kindred to my own. I speak their language, but it is not as a native:
/they/ know not a syllable of mine! With a future age my heart may
have more in common; to a future age my thoughts may be less
unfamiliar, and my sentiments less strange. I trust these confessions to
the trial!
Children of an after century, between you and the being who has traced
the pages ye behold--that busy, versatile, restless being--there is but
one step,--but that step is a century! His /now/ is separated from your
now by an interval of three generations! While he writes, he is exulting

in the vigour of health and manhood; while ye read, the very worms are
starving upon his dust. This commune between the living and the dead;
this intercourse between that which breathes and moves and /is/, and
that which life animates not nor mortality knows,--annihilates
falsehood, and chills even self-delusion into awe. Come, then, and look
upon the picture of a past day and of a gone being, without
apprehension of deceit; and as the shadows and lights of a checkered
and wild existence flit before you, watch if in your own hearts there be
aught which mirrors the reflection.
MORTON DEVEREUX.

NOTE TO THE PRESENT EDITION (1852).
If this work possess any merit of a Narrative order, it will perhaps be
found in its fidelity to the characteristics of an Autobiography. The
reader must, indeed, comply with the condition exacted from his
imagination and faith; that is to say, he must take the hero of the story
upon the terms for which Morton Devereux himself stipulates; and
regard the supposed Count as one who lived and wrote in the last
century, but who (dimly conscious that the tone of his mind
harmonized less with his own age than with that which was to come)
left his biography as a legacy to the present. This assumption (which is
not an unfair one) liberally conceded, and allowed to account for
occasional anachronisms in sentiment, Morton Devereux will be found
to write as