Last of the Barons

Last of the Barons

The Project Gutenberg EBook Last Of The Barons, by Lytton,
Complete #154 in our series by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
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Title: The Last Of The Barons, Complete
Author: Edward Bulwer-Lytton
Release Date: March 2005 [EBook #7727] [Yes, we are more than one
year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on May 6, 2003]
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THE LAST OF THE BARONS
by Edward Bulwer Lytton

DEDICATORY EPISTLE.
I dedicate to you, my indulgent Critic and long-tried Friend, the work
which owes its origin to your suggestion. Long since, you urged me to
attempt a fiction which might borrow its characters from our own
Records, and serve to illustrate some of those truths which History is
too often compelled to leave to the Tale-teller, the Dramatist, and the
Poet. Unquestionably, Fiction, when aspiring to something higher than
mere romance, does not pervert, but elucidate Facts. He who employs it
worthily must, like a biographer, study the time and the characters he
selects, with a minute and earnest diligence which the general historian,
whose range extends over centuries, can scarcely be expected to bestow
upon the things and the men of a single epoch. His descriptions should
fill up with colour and detail the cold outlines of the rapid chronicler;
and in spite of all that has been argued by pseudo-critics, the very fancy
which urged and animated his theme should necessarily tend to
increase the reader's practical and familiar acquaintance with the habits,
the motives, and the modes of thought which constitute the true
idiosyncrasy of an age. More than all, to Fiction is permitted that liberal
use of Analogical Hypothesis which is denied to History, and which, if
sobered by research, and enlightened by that knowledge of mankind
(without which Fiction can neither harm nor profit, for it becomes
unreadable), tends to clear up much that were otherwise obscure, and to
solve the disputes and difficulties of contradictory evidence by the
philosophy of the human heart.
My own impression of the greatness of the labour to which you invited

me made me the more diffident of success, inasmuch as the field of
English historical fiction had been so amply cultivated, not only by the
most brilliant of our many glorious Novelists, but by later writers of
high and merited reputation. But however the annals of our History
have been exhausted by the industry of romance, the subject you finally
pressed on my choice is unquestionably one which, whether in the
delineation of character, the expression of passion, or the suggestion of
historical truths, can hardly fail to direct the Novelist to paths wholly
untrodden by his predecessors in the Land of Fiction.
Encouraged by you, I commenced my task; encouraged by you, I
venture, on concluding it, to believe that, despite the partial adoption of
that established compromise between the modern and the elder diction,
which Sir Walter Scott so artistically improved from the more rugged
phraseology employed by Strutt, and which later writers have perhaps
somewhat overhackneyed, I may yet have avoided all material trespass
upon ground which others have already redeemed from the waste.
Whatever the produce of the soil I have selected, I claim, at least, to
have cleared it with my own labour, and ploughed it with my own
heifer.
The reign of Edward IV. is in itself suggestive of new considerations
and unexhausted interest to those who accurately regard it. Then
commenced the policy consummated by Henry VII.; then were broken
up the great elements of the old feudal order; a new Nobility was called
into power, to aid the growing Middle Class in its struggles with the
ancient; and in the fate of the hero of the age, Richard Nevile, Earl of
Warwick, popularly called the