Lord Lytton's Novels Paul Clifford - 17 Author:Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton Volume: 17 General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1878 Original Publisher: G. Routledge Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com wher... more »e you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: BOOK SECOND. INITIAL CHAPTER. INFORMING THE READER HOW THIS WORK CAME TO HAVE IN1TIAI. CHAPTERS. " There can't be a doubt," said my father, " that to each of the main divisions of your work -- whether you call them Books or Parts -- you should prefix an Initial or Introductory Chapter." Pisistratus. -- " Can't be a doubt, sir ! Why so ? " Mr. Caxton. -- " Melding lays it down as an indispensable rule, which he supports by his example : and Fielding was an artistical writer, and knew what he was about." Pisistratus. -- "Do you remember any of his reasons, sir?" Mr. Caxton. -- "Why, indeed, Fielding says, very justly, that he is not bound to assign any reason ; but he does assign a good many, here and there -- to find which, I refer you to Tom Jones. I will only observe, that one of his reasons, which is unanswerable, runs to the effect that thus, in every Part or Book, the reader has the advantage of beginning at the fourth or fifth page instead of the first -- ' a matter by no means of trivial consequence,' saith Fielding, ' to persons who read books with no other view than to say they have read them -- a more general motive to reading than is commonly imagined and from which not only law books and good books, but the pages of Homer and Virgil, of Swift and Cervantes, have been often turned over.' There," cried my father, triumphantly, I will lay a shilling to twopence that I have quoted the very words. Mrs. Caxton. -- " Dear me, that only means skipping: I don't see any great advantage in writing a chapter, merely for people to skip it." Pisistratus...« less