PROSPECTUSOF THELIBRARY OF SELECT NOVELS.
Fictitiouscomposition is now admitted to form an extensive and important portion of literature. Well-wrought novels take their rank by the side of real narratives, and are appealed to as evidence in all questions concerning man. In them the customs of countries, the transitions and shades of character, and even the very peculiarities of costume and dialect, are curiously preserved; and the imperishable spirit that surrounds and keeps them for the use of successive generations renders the rarities for ever fresh and green. In them human life is laid down as on a map. The strong and vivid exhibitions of passion and of character which they furnish, acquire and maintain the strongest hold upon the curiosity, and, it may be added, the affections of every class of readers; for not only is entertainment in all the various moods of tragedy and comedy provided in their pages, but he who reads them attentively may often obtain, without the bitterness and danger of experience, that knowledge of his fellow-creatures which but for such aid could, in the majority of cases, be only acquired at a period of life too late to turn it to account.
This “Library of Select Novels” will embrace none but such as have received the impress of general approbation, or have been written by authors of established character; and the publishers hope to receive such encouragement from the public patronage as will enable them in the course of time to produce a series of works of uniform appearance, and including most of the really valuable novels and romances that have been or shall be issued from the modern English and American press.
There is scarcely any question connected with the interests of literature which has been more thoroughly discussed and investigated than that of the utility or evil of novel reading. In its favour much may be and has been said, and it must be admitted that the reasonings of those who believe novels to be injurious, or at least useless, are not without force and plausibility. Yet, if the arguments against novels are closely examined, it will be found that they are more applicable in general to excessive indulgence in the pleasures afforded by the perusal of fictitious adventures than to the works themselves; and that the evils which can be justly ascribed to them arise almost exclusively, not from any peculiar noxious qualities that can be fairly attributed to novels as a species, but from those individual works which in their class must be pronounced to be indifferent.
But even were it otherwise—were novels of every kind, the good as well as the bad, the striking and animated not less than the puerile, indeed liable to the charge of enfeebling or perverting the mind; and were there no qualities in any which might render them instructive as well as amusing—the universal acceptation which they have ever received, and still continue to receive, from all ages and classes of men, would prove an irresistible incentive to their production. The remonstrances of moralists and the reasonings of philosophy have ever been, and will still be found, unavailing against the desire to partake of an enjoyment so attractive. Men will read novels; and therefore the utmost that wisdom and philanthropy can do is to cater prudently for the public appetite, and, as it is hopeless to attempt the exclusion of fictitious writings from the shelves of the library, to see that they are encumbered with the least possible number of such as have no other merit than that of novelty.
“The works of our elder dramatists,as hitherto edited, are wholly unfit to be placed in the hands of young persons, or of females of any age, or even to be thought of for a moment as furniture for the drawing-room table, and the parlour-window, or to form the solace of a family circle at the fireside. What lady will ever confess that she has read and understood Massinger, or Ford, or even Beaumont and Fletcher? There is hardly a single piece in any of those authors which does not contain more abominable passages than the very worst of modern panders would ever dream of hazarding in print—and there are whole plays in Ford, and in Beaumont and Fletcher, the very essence and substance of which is, from beginning to end, one mass of pollution. The works, therefore, of these immortal men have hitherto been library, not drawing-room books;—and we have not a doubt, that, down to this moment, they have been carefully excluded,in toto, from the vast majority of those English houses in which their divine poetry, if stripped of its deforming accompaniments, would have been ministering the most effectually to the instruction and delight of our countrymen, and, above all, of our fair countrywomen.
“We welcome, therefore, the appearance of theDramatic Seriesof theFamily Librarywith no ordinary feelings of satisfaction. We are now sure that, ere many months elapse, the productions of those distinguished bards—all of them that is worthy of their genius, their taste, and the acceptation of a moral and refined people—will be placed within reach of every circle from which their very names have hitherto been sufficient to exclude them, in a shape such as must command confidence, and richly reward it. The text will be presented pure and correct, wherever it is fit to be presented at all—every word and passage offensive to the modest ear will be omitted; and means adopted, through the notes, of preserving the sense and story entire, in spite of these necessary erasures. If this were all, it would be a great deal—but the editors undertake much more. They will furnish, in their preliminary notices, and in their notes, clear accounts of the origin, structure, and object of every piece, and the substance of all that sound criticism has brought to their illustration, divested, however, of the personal squabbles and controversies which so heavily and offensively load the bottoms of the pages in the best existing editions of our dramatic worthies. Lives of the authors will be given; and if they be all drawn up with the skill and elegance which mark the Life of Massinger, in the first volume, these alone will form a standard addition to our biographical literature.”—Literary Gazette.
“The early British Drama forms so important a portion of our literature, that a ‘Family Library’ would be incomplete without it. A formidable obstacle to the publication of our early plays, however, consists in the occasional impurity of their dialogue. The editors of the Family Library have, therefore, judiciously determined on publishing a selection of old plays, omitting all such passages as are inconsistent with modern delicacy. The task of separation requires great skill and discretion, but these qualities we have no apprehension of not finding, in the fullest degree requisite, in the editors, who, by this purifying process, will perform a service both to the public and to the authors, whom they will thereby draw forth from unmerited obscurity.”—Asiatic Journal.
“The first number of the ‘Dramatic Series’ of this work commences with the Plays ofMassinger; and the lovers of poetry and the drama may now, for the first time, possess the works of all the distinguished writers of the renowned Elizabethan age, at a cost which most pockets can bear; in a form and style, too, which would recommend them to the most tasteful book collector. A portrait of Massinger adorns the first volume; and what little is known of the dramatist is given in a short account of his life.”—Examiner.