THE CAXTONS: A Family Picture. BY SIR EDWARD BULWER LYTTON, BART. M.P. "Every family is a history in itself, and even a poem to "Di, probos mores docili juventæ HORAT. Carmen Sæculare. New Edition. LONDON: G. ROUTLEDGE & CO., FARRINGDON STREET. NEW YORK: 18, BEEKMAN STREET. 1856, 1858. May 15, Gift of Henry G Denny, of Bustere. LONDON: SAVILL AND EDWARDS, PRINTERS, CHANDOS STREET, COVENT GARDEN. PREFACE. Ir it be the good fortune of this work to possess any interest for the Novel reader, that interest, perhaps, will be but little derived from the customary elements of fiction. The plot is extremely slight; the incidents are few, and, with the exception of those which involve the fate of VIVIAN, such as may be found in the records of ordinary life. Regarded as a Novel, this attempt is an experiment somewhat apart from the previous works of the author; it is the first of his writings in which Humour has been employed less for the purpose of satire than in illustration of amiable characters;-it is the first, too, in which man has been viewed less in his active relations with the world, than in his repose at his own hearth:— in a word, the greater part of the canvass has been devoted to the completion of a simple FAMILY PICTURE. And thus, in any appeal to the sympathies of the human heart, the common household affections occupy the place of those livelier or larger passions which usually (and not unjustly) arrogate the foreground in Romantic composition. In the Hero whose autobiography connects the different characters and events of the work, it has been the Author's intention to imply the influences of Home upon the conduct and career of youth; and in the ambition which estranges PISISTRATUS for a time from the sedentary occupations in which the man of civilised life must usually serve his apprenticeship to Fortune or to Fame, it is not designed to describe the fever of Genius conscious of superior powers and aspiring to high destinies, but the natural tendencies of a fresh and buoyant mind, rather vigorous than contemplative, and in which the desire of action is but the symptom of health. PISISTRATUS, in this respect (as he himself feels and implies), becomes the specimen or type of a class the numbers of which are daily increasing in the inevitable progress of modern civilisation. He is one too many in the midst of the crowd: he is the representative of the exuberant energies of youth, turning, as with the instinct of nature for space and development, from the Old World to the New. That which may be called the interior meaning of the whole is sought to be completed by the inference that, whatever our wanderings, our happiness will always be found within a narrow compass, and amidst the objects more immediately within our reach;-but that we are seldom sensible of this truth (hackneyed though it be in the Schools of all Philosophies) till our researches have spread over a wider area. To insure the blessing of repose, we require a brisker excitement than a few turns up and down our room. Content is like that humour in the crystal, on which Claudian has lavished the wonder of a child and the fancies of a Poet "Vivis gemma tumescit aquis." October, 1849 E. B. L |