But the most formidable of all were the
wildly interesting romances of Anne Radcliffe, whose magical wonders
and mysteries were then the ruling style of the day. I urged, how
could any one expect that the admiring readers of such works could
consider my simply-told biographical legend of Poland anything better
than a dull union between real history and a matter-of-fact
imagination?
Arguments were found to answer all this; and being excited by the
feelings which had dictated my little work, and encouraged by the
corresponding characters with whom I daily associated, I ventured the
essay. However, I had not read the sage romances of our older times
without turning to some account the lessons they taught to
adventurous personages of either sex; showing that even the boldest
knight never made a new sally without consecrating his shield with
some impress of acknowledged reverence. In like manner, when I
entered the field with my modern romance of Thaddeus of Warsaw, I
inscribed the first page with the name of the hero of Acre. That
dedication will be found through all its successive editions, still
in front of the title-page; and immediately following it is a second
inscription, added, in after years, to the memory of the magnanimous
patriot and exemplary man, Thaddeus Kosciusko, who had first filled
me with ambition to write the tale, and who died in Switzerland, A.
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