Who is he, do you ask? No one knows.
Perhaps when he made his extraordinary disclosures to the present
writer, he wished to see them in some sort reproduced; to enjoy the
effect of the sensation on the multitude; to feel as Macpherson might
have felt when the name of Ossian, his creation, passed into all
languages. And, in truth, that Scottish advocate knew one of the
keenest, or, at any rate, one of the rarest sensations in human
experience. What was this but the incognito of genius? To write an
_Itineraire de Paris a Jerusalem_ is to take one's share in the glory
of a century, but to give a Homer to one's country--this surely is a
usurpation of the rights of God.
The writer is too well acquainted with the laws of narration to be
unaware of the nature of the pledge given by this brief preface; but,
at the same time, he knows enough of the history of the Thirteen to
feel confident that he shall not disappoint any expectations raised by
the programme. Tragedies dripping with gore, comedies piled up with
horrors, tales of heads taken off in secret have been confided to him.
If any reader has not had enough of the ghastly tales served up to the
public for some time past, he has only to express his wish; the author
is in a position to reveal cold-blooded atrocities and family secrets
of a gloomy and astonishing nature. But in preference he has chosen
those pleasanter stories in which stormy passions are succeeded by
purer scenes, where the beauty and goodness of woman shine out the
brighter for the darkness.
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