The public are here presented with the last literary attempt of an author,whose fame has been uncommonly extensive, and whose talents have probably beenmost admired, by the persons by whom talents are estimated with the greatestaccuracy and discrimination. There are few, to whom her writings could in anycase have given pleasure, that would have wished that this fragment should havebeen suppressed, because it is a fragment. There is a sentiment, very dear tominds of taste and imagination, that finds a melancholy delight incontemplating these unfinished productions of genius, these sketches of what,if they had been filled up in a manner adequate to the writer’s conception,would perhaps have given a new impulse to the manners of a world.
The purpose and structure of the following work, had long formed a favouritesubject of meditation with its author, and she judged them capable of producingan important effect. The composition had been in progress for a period oftwelve months. She was anxious to do justice to her conception, and recommencedand revised the manuscript several different times. So much of it as is heregiven to the public, she was far from considering as finished, and, in a letterto a friend directly written on this subject, she says, “I am perfectly awarethat some of the incidents ought to be transposed, and heightened by moreharmonious shading; and I wished in some degree to avail myself of criticism,before I began to adjust my events into a story, the outline of which I hadsketched in my mind.”[1] The onl