DE VERE; OR, THE MAN OF INDEPENDENCE. BY THE AUTHOR OF TREMAINE. My free drift Halts not particularly, but moves itself In a wide sea of wax. SHAKSPEARE. Power to do good is the true and lawful end of aspiring: for good thoughts IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. I. THIRD EDITION. BACON, LONDON: HENRY COLBURN, NEW BURLINGTON STREET. 1827. KONINKLIJKE BIBLIOTHEEK TO HENRY, EARL OF MULGRAVE, VISCOUNT NORMAN BY, BARON MULGRAVE, KNIGHT GRAND CROSS OF THE MOST HONOURABLE ORDER OF THE BATH, &c. &c. &c. MY LORD, As the following work treats much of independence of mind, and of the effects which ambition produces upon the heart and character of man, I know not that I can ask a better grace for it, than to be allowed to inscribe it to one who has run through so great a career as your Lordship, reaping from it nothing but honour. But though I have been a witness to the devotion of your life to public duty, perhaps no part of it inspired me with more admiring respect, than the disinterested manner in which, after so ably administering your power, you voluntarily laid it down. Surrounded by the friends of your love, and who give you all their veneration in return, you are a happy example of the better sort of ambition treated of in this work. I have other reasons, of private attachment, which make me not less glad to profit by an opportunity of marking my grateful respect for your virtues: but with these, however they may influence individual feeling, the world is not concerned. That Providence, which preserved you amid the dangers of your earlier career, may continue to watch over you during the repose of your honourable life, is the sincere wish of Your most attached Friend, And obliged humble Servant, London, March 6th, 1827. THE AUTHOR PREFACE. THAT species of literary composition called the Novel has been carried to so consummate a pitch of perfection during the last twenty or thirty years, that, in its power of delineating, exciting, or soothing the human heart, it almost rivals the Drama itself. True, the Novel must ever want that great advantage of the Drama, which the name of the latter implies,—that of representing by action; and it is also inferior, inasmuch as it never can soar into poetry. This, however, cannot be done even by Rhetoric, with all its flowers; and both this species of writing, and Rhetoric itself, must always be content to be prose. And yet, as the Drama charms us in the closet without being acted, and also without being always poetry, there is no reason, à priori, why a Novel, founded on human nature, and not confined to mere pictures of things, should not assume as high a tone, and possess as much influence over us, as any unacted dramatic prose composition. As to representation, |