are intended to be enjoyed either by the writer of them or the reader. 

 I have noticed sometimes that people speak rather scornfully of a story as "readable." But if it be not first of all "readable" what afterwards can it be? Surely dead before it is born. 

 I hope then, and I believe, that this tale is "readable" at least. I know no more than that what it is—fancy, story allegory, what you will. I might invoke the great names of Hoffmann and Hawthorne for its Godfathers. I might recall a story much beloved by me, Sintram and His Companions, did I not, most justly, fear the comparison! 

 But the word allegory is, in these days, a dangerous one, and some one will soon be showing me that we have, each one of us, his Sea-Fog, his White Tower, and that it is the fault of his own weakness if he does not fling out of the window his Red-Haired man. 

 No, no, God forbid. This is a tale and nothing but a tale, and all I ask is that once beginning it you will find it hard to lay down unfinished— 

and that you will think of me always as

Your affectionate friend

HUGH.

 . . . Within these few restrictions, I think, every writer may be permitted to deal as much in the wonderful as he pleases; nay, if he then keeps within the rules of credibility, the more he can surprise the reader the more he will engage his attention, and the more he will charm him. 

 As a genius of the highest rank observes in his fifth chapter of the Bathos, "The great art of all poetry is to mix truth with fiction, in order to join the credible with the surprising." 

 For though every good author will confine himself within the bounds of probability, it is by no means necessary that his characters or his incidents should be trite, common, or vulgar; such as happen in every street, or in every house, or which may be met with in the home articles of a newspaper. Nor must he be inhibited from showing many persons and things which may possibly never have fallen within the knowledge of great part of his readers. 

HENRY FIELDING.

CONTENTS

PART I The Sea Like Bronze PART II The Dance Round the Town PART III Sea-fog PART IV The Tower

 PART I: THE SEA LIKE BRONZE. . . .

 Prev. P 2/170 next