Prefatory Note

We do not intend to review our own work; if we did it justice we might be accused of partiality, and we are not such fools as to abuse it.  We leave that to our literary friends who may have so little taste as not to appreciate its merits.  Not that there would be anything novel in reviewing our own performances—­that we have discovered since we have assumed the office of editor; but still it is always done sub rosa, whereas in our position we could not deny our situation as editor and author.  Of Peter Simple, therefore, we say nothing, but we take this opportunity of saying a few words to the public.... The Naval Officer was our first attempt, and its having been our first attempt must be offered in extenuation of its many imperfections; it was written hastily, and before it was complete we were appointed to a ship.  We cared much about our ship and little about our book.  The first was diligently taken care of by ourselves, the second was left in the hands of others to get on how it could.  Like most bantlings put out to nurse, it did not get on very well.  As we happen to be in a communicative vein, it may be as well to remark that, being written in the autobiographical style, it was asserted by friends, and believed in general, that it was a history of the author’s life.  Now, without pretending to have been better than we should have been in our earlier days, we do most solemnly assure the public that had we run the career of vice of the hero of the Naval Officer, at all events we should have had sufficient sense of shame not to have avowed it.  Except the hero and heroine, and those parts of the work which supply the slight plot of it as a novel, the work in itself is materially true, especially in the narrative of sea adventure, most of which did (to the best of our recollection) occur to the author.  We say to the best of our recollection, as it behoves us to be careful.  We have not forgotten the snare in which Chamier found himself by asserting in his preface that his narrative was fact.  In The Naval Officer much good material was thrown away; but we intend to write it over again some day of these days, and The Naval Officer, when corrected, will be so improved that he may be permitted to stand on the same shelf with Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility.[A]

[Footnote A:  The improvement was never made.—­Ed.]

“The confounded licking we received for our first attempts in the critical notices is probably well known to the reader—­at all events we have not forgotten it.  Now, with some, this severe castigation of their first offence would have had the effect of their never offending again; but we felt that our punishment was rather too severe; it produced indignation instead of contrition, and we determined to write again in spite of all the critics in the universe; and in the due course of nine months