Perhaps the hardest thing in all literature--at least I have found it
so: by no voluntary effort can I accomplish it: I have to take it as it
come's is to write anything original. And perhaps the easiest is,
when once an original line has been struck out, to follow it up,
and to write any amount more to the same tune.
I do not know if 'Alice in Wonderland' was an original story--I was,
at least, no conscious imitator in writing it--but I do know that,
since it came out, something like a dozen story-books have appeared,
on identically the same pattern. The path I timidly explored believing
myself to be 'the first that ever burst into that silent sea'--
is now a beaten high-road: all the way-side flowers have long ago been
trampled into the dust: and it would be courting disaster for me to
attempt that style again.
Hence it is that, in 'Sylvie and Bruno,' I have striven with I know not
what success to strike out yet another new path: be it bad or good,
it is the best I can do. It is written, not for money, and not for fame,
but in the hope of supplying, for the children whom I love, some thoughts
that may suit those hours of innocent merriment which are the very life
of Childhood; and also in the hope of suggesting, to them and to others,
some thoughts that may prove, I would fain hope, not wholly out of harmony
with the graver cadences of Life.
If I have not already exhausted the patience of my readers, I would
like to seize this opportunity perhaps the last I shall have of
addressing so many friends at once of putting on record some ideas that
have occurred to me, as to books desirable to be written--which I
should much like to attempt, but may not ever have the time or power to
carry through--in the hope that, if I should fail (and the years are
gliding away very fast) to finish the task I have set myself, other
hands may take it up.
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