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And that I may conform my opinion to theirs, I will answer only by repeating a passage from an ancient author: 'In the worst of times I did not forsake the city, in the most prosperous I had no particular views, and in the most desperate times of all I feared nothing. I desire to be excused for running into this digression.
The object of that digression has been to trace the growth of but one great territorial family, from the gutter to affluence in the course of less than 100 years; to show how plain "Williams" gradually and secretly became "Cromwell" because the new name had about it a flavour of nobility, however parvenu; to show how the whole of their vast revenues depended upon, and was born from, the destruction of monastic system, and to show by the example of one Thames-side family how rapidly and from what sources was derived that economic power of the squires which, when it came to the issue of arms, utterly destroyed what was left of the national monarchy.
On reading over this page, I observe that I have made a wide digression from my subject... But what matter?... You see, it is for myself that I am writing this diary, and, consequently anything that I jot down in it will in time be a valuable reminiscence for me. Grushnitski has called to see me to-day. He flung himself upon my neck; he has been promoted to be an officer. We drank champagne.
He had trodden all the main-traveled thoroughfares and many of the side roads that are supposed to relieve the tedium of life. But none had sufficed. The reason was that he knew what was to be found at the end of every street. He knew from experience and logic almost precisely to what end each digression from routine must lead.
There must be some sound cause in the world's philosophy for this general concurrence of digression from a road of which the travellers themselves say to those whom they love best, "Beware!" Romance in youth is, if rightly understood, the happiest nutriment of wisdom in after-years; but I would never invite any one to look upon the romance of youth as a thing
But while the kind had not conquered, and for a long time did not conquer, any high place in literature from the point of view of serious criticism while, now and long afterwards, novel-writing was the Cinderella of the literary family, and novel-reading the inexhaustible text for sermons on wasted, nay positively ill-spent, time the novelists themselves half justified their critics by frequent extravagance; by more frequent unreality; by undue licence pretty often; by digression and divagation still oftener.
And the Beauty-man is, nine times out of ten, little more than the oracle of his aunts, and the "/Sich/ a love!" of the housemaids! To return from this digression, Maltravers was glad that he could talk in his own language to Madame de Ventadour; and the conversation between them generally began in French, and glided away into English.
But this story has led me far from the subject I was previously commencing: this narrative, which I never call to mind without a feeling of pleasure, has led me away in spite of myself. Still I trust that my narrative has been sufficiently interesting to induce you to pardon the digression it has occasioned, and now I will resume the thread of my discourse.
The paragraph I have just written will seem like a digression to the careless reader, but he who has read carefully, or will take the trouble to glance back, will not fail to see, that although in appearance digressive, it is a strict and accurate comment on Charles Keene, and the circumstances in which his art was produced.
I could find in my Heart to beg the Reader's pardon for this Digression, if I thought he would be sensible of the Civility; for I promise him, I do not intend to do it again throughout the Story, though I make never so many, and though he take them never so ill.
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