Life and Literary Remains of L. E. L./Introduction
INTRODUCTION.
The following sketch of the literary and personal life of L. E L. has been executed in fulfilment of a pledge given to her long before she meditated leaving England, and renewed immediately previous to her departure. I should not otherwise have presumed to attempt anything of the kind. A few years ago, when England had just lost one of her ablest writers, she thus expressed herself in a letter replying to my suggestion that she should review his works—"I almost fear to praise such a man; but comfort myself with thinking that though few can raise the carved marble over a great author's remains, all may throw a flower on his grave."
When supplying me with some materials for a slight sketch of her life, published in the "New Monthly Magazine," she wrote thus: "These, I believe, are all the facts I can give you at present. Feelings are but poor substitutes in a memoir—else what a life would mine be! . . . But these are for a later biography, which I shall also entrust to you."
The suddenness of her death prevented her from making the necessary preparations for that later biography. Her design, however, has been accomplished, as far as possible. Much of what was essential to its accomplishment, has been supplied by the anxious care of her family, and the grateful zeal of some of her personal friends. To them, the writer's thanks are here given for enabling him, at least partially, to fulfil his obligations to the object of their common regard.
What is now submitted to the public, could not well have been written earlier. The interval between her death, and the publication of these volumes, has not been idly spent by those whose duty it was to investigate the circumstances under which she died. The hope of entirely elucidating all that was mysterious in her fate, forbade an earlier effort to relieve that public anxiety, which was evidence equally of pity for her misfortunes, and appreciation of her worth.
L. B.
Of the writings of L. E. L. that appear in these volumes, none have been published before but the "Subjects for Pictures, &c." and the mottos to some of the chapters of "Ethel Churchill," which had been previously uncollected. Two or three of the essays on the "Female Characters of Scott" had been printed in an incomplete state. The rest are entirely new. In addition to the letters and poems that are interwoven with the memoir, the tragedy of "Castruccio Castrucani" is published for the first time.