Aram is founded, I have exercised the common and fair licence of writers of fiction: it is chiefly the more homely parts of the real story that have been altered; and for what I have added, and what omitted, I have the sanction of all established authorities, who have taken greater liberties with characters yet more recent, and far more protected by historical recollections. The book was, for the most part, written in the early part of the year, when the interest the task created in the Author was undivided by other subjects of excitement, and he had leisure enough not only to be nescio quid meditans nugarum, but also to be totus in illis!
I originally purposed to have adapted the story of Eugene Aram to the Stage. I abandoned that design when more than half completed; but 1 have wished to impart to this Romance something of the nature of Tragedy,—something of
