“ * * * * With respect to the ‘machinery’ which is used to introduce the story of ‘De Vere,’ the author and myself do not seem to differ materially; and I am most glad to find that he intends (for so I understand him) to get rid of Beauclerk altogether. If the author will only call to mind the period of momentous interest to all parties, except Beauclerk himself, at which this person is first introduced at Talbois, he (the author) will perceive how much worse than superfluous his presence there must be.
“The author, it appears, does not see any objection to
the plan he has adopted, of introducing us to his hero at a matured period of
his life, and of settling his character, and his habits of thought and feeling,
in our minds, and then going back for many years, to show how those habits and
that character
| 36 | R. PLUMER WARD. |
Let me add, in reference to particular passages in the extract sent me, first, that I by no means intended to ‘hold it as a rule that you cannot introduce a matured character,’ &c. and then go back to show how that character ‘was produced,’ &c. What I meant to say was, that in the instance of De Vere this plan had been carried to a mischievous extent. I perfectly remembered that the same plan was adopted in the case of Tremaine. But I remembered also, that in that case, though the time which the reader was carried back might be many years, the retrospection was effected in a few pages, instead of (as in De Vere) three whole volumes out of four.”
