The character was drawn from life, but unfortunately from hearsay; he had flourished—­to the great terror of his neighbours—­two generations before me, so that I had to be indebted to others for his portraiture, which was a great disadvantage.  It was necessary that the lost man should be an immense scoundrel to prevent pity being excited by the catastrophe, and at that time I did not know any very wicked people.  The book was a successful one, but it needs no critic to point out how much better the story might have been told.  The interest in the gentleman, buried upright in his oak coffin, is inartistically weakened by other sources of excitement; like an extravagant cook, the young author is apt to be too lavish with his materials, and in after days, when the larder is more difficult to fill, he bitterly regrets it.  The representation of a past time I also found it very difficult to compass, and I am convinced that for any writer to attempt such a thing, when he can avoid it, is an error in judgment.  The author who undertakes to resuscitate and clothe with flesh and blood the dry bones of his ancestors, has indeed this advantage, that, however unlifelike his characters may be, there is no one in a position to prove it; it is not ’a difference of opinion between himself and twelve of his fellow-countrymen,’ or a matter on which he can be condemned by overwhelming evidence; but, on the other hand, he creates for himself unnecessary difficulties.  I will add, for the benefit of those literary aspirants to whom these remarks are especially addressed—­a circumstance which, I hope, will be taken as an excuse for the writing of my own affairs at all, which would otherwise be an unpardonable presumption—­that these difficulties are not the worst of it; for when the novel founded on the Past has been written, it will not be read by a tenth of those who would read it if it were a novel of the Present.

Even at the date I speak of, however, I was not so young as to attempt to create the characters of a story out of my own imagination, and I believe that the whole of its dramatis personae (except the chief personage) were taken from the circle of my own acquaintance.  This is a matter, by-the-bye, on which considerable judgment and good taste have to be exercised; for if the likeness of the person depicted is recognisable by his friends (he never recognises it by any chance himself), or still more by his enemies, it is no longer a sketch from life, but a lampoon.  It will naturally be asked by some:  ’But if you draw the man to the life, how can he fail to be known?’ For this there is the simplest remedy.  You describe his character, but under another skin; if he is tall you make him short, if dark, fair; or you make such alterations in his circumstances as shall prevent identification, while retaining them to a sufficient extent to influence his behaviour.  In the framework which most (though not all) skilled workmen draw of their stories before