ΤΟ HENRY HALLAM, ESQ. MY DEAR SIR, IT It may excite some just surprise both in others and yourself, that I have ventured to prefix to these light leaves a name so grave and exalted in English letters. But I have a motive for so doing which I would fain believe that you will appreciate and approve. If I have ever entertained pleasurable anticipations connected with the publication of any production of my mind, they have owed not a little to the thought that I should thus be enabled to give, in my humble way, an open testimony to the affectionate admiration with which I regarded one, whom I loved with the truth of early friendship, and you with a parent's passion. It has pleased that high Will, to which we must submit every thing, even our loves, to take Him away, in whom the world has lost so much, and they who knew him so much more. I would therefore delude my grief by the fancy, that in offering this little book to your name, I am paying my feeble but ardent homage to him who is gone. You and your family have a supremacy of sorrow on which no one can dare to intrude; but still we, the contemporaries of your dear son, have one source of regret, which, in the nature of things, is spared you. We are deprived, not only of a beloved friend, of a delightful companion, but of a most wise and influential counsellor in all the serious concerns of existence, of an incomparable critic in all our literary efforts, and of the example of one who was as much before us in every thing else, as he is now in the way of life. I hold his kind words and earnest admonitions in the best part of my heart, I have his noble and tender letters by my side, and I feel secure from any charge of presumption in thus addressing you, under the shield of his sacred memory. I remain, my dear Sir, Your deeply obliged And obedient Servant, R. M. MILNES. London, Nov. 1833. |