OF A RECLUSE. -Not a Recluse by choice? then how? By doom NICIAS FOXCAR. RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET, 1870. [All rights reserved.] PREFATORY. THE wish that one's enemy had written a book is, perhaps, in these latter days, scarcely gratified to the full unless he has also written a preface. A preface is, in the nature of things, more or less deprecatory and apologetic. And we all know the sharp edge of the saw, Qui s'excuse, s'accuse. If, therefore, a preface be indited at all, brevity is the soul of wit in it; for the less said, the sooner mended. How the present Recluse came to be one,-is not his excuse, that is to say his self-accusation, intimated in certain lines on the title-page? Being a Recluse, he had need of his recreations. And here they be some of them; more to follow, if the reader have a mind thereto. But only a reader who cares for themes with variations-the themes from some one composer, the variations from very many-and who likes to compare accent and tone, and characteristic phrasing in the parallel passages: only such a reader, perhaps, will be capable of understanding what there is of recreation in such pages; to say nothing of understanding what it is to be a Recluse. LONDON, March 31, 1870. F. J. CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME. PAGE |