The Project Gutenberg EBook of Eugene Aram, Complete, by Edward Bulwer-Lytton

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Title: Eugene Aram, Complete

Author: Edward Bulwer-Lytton

Release Date: March 16, 2009 [EBook #7614]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EUGENE ARAM, COMPLETE ***

Produced by David Widger

EUGENE ARAM

A TALE

By Edward Bulwer Lytton

TO SIR WALTER SCOTT, BART., ETC.

SIR,--It has long been my ambition to add some humble tribute to the
offerings laid upon the shrine of your genius. At each succeeding book
that I have given to the world, I have paused to consider if it were
worthy to be inscribed with your great name, and at each I have played
the procrastinator, and hoped for that morrow of better desert which
never came. But 'defluat amnis',--the time runs on; and I am tired of
waiting for the ford which the tides refuse. I seize, then, the present
opportunity, not as the best, but as the only one I can be sure of
commanding, to express that affectionate admiration with which you have
inspired me in common with all your contemporaries, and which a French
writer has not ungracefully termed "the happiest prerogative of genius."
As a Poet and as a Novelist your fame has attained to that height in
which praise has become superfluous; but in the character of the writer
there seems to me a yet higher claim to veneration than in that of the
writings. The example your genius sets us, who can emulate? The example
your moderation bequeaths to us, who shall forget? That nature
must indeed be gentle which has conciliated the envy that pursues
intellectual greatness, and left without an enemy a man who has no
living equal in renown.

You have gone for a while from the scenes you have immortalized, to
regain, we trust, the health which has been impaired by your noble
labors or by the manly struggles with adverse fortunes which have not
found the frame as indomitable as the mind. Take with you the prayers of
all whom your genius, with playful art, has soothed in sickness, or has
strengthened, with generous precepts, against the calamities of life.

[Written at the time of Sir W. Scott's visit to Italy,