TIGHE LYFFORD. A NOVEL.
"Why, let the stricken deer go weep, The hart ungalled play; For some must watch, while some must sleep:— Thus runs the world away."NEW YORK: JAMES MILLER, 436 BROADWAY.
1859.
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1859, BY JAMES MILLER, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York.
NEW YORK:
BILLIN AND BROTHER, PRINTERS,
XX, NORTH WILLIAM ST.
THE Author, while admitting a natural anxiety for the success of his book, has by no means a wish to deprecate criticism upon it. Honest criticism has rarely, if ever, done permanent injury to a book or its author. Even when unjust, it has seldom done more harm than good. It may indeed have aided consumption in the death of a Keats, which, however, is questionable; but it made, perhaps, amends for this, by rousing into vigorous action the latent energies of a Byron. But what criticism cannot do, misconstruction or misrepresentation may; and these he is most desirous to avoid. His book has been called a novel; and it is nothing more; and he begs that no one will suppose or say, that that which was written years ago for the employment of an idle hour, and with the hope of affording an hour's innocent amusement to others, might have been written for another purpose. The Author has no spleen to gratify, no enemies he would not openly confront, and in glancing at the evils of a system, it has not been with the intention of covertly assailing any individual whom the system he condemns would be likely to create. His story is a fiction, and as a fiction let it be judged.
