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RACHEL DYER:
A NORTH AMERICAN STORY.
BY JOHN NEAL.
PORTLAND:
PUBLISHED BY SHIRLEY AND HYDE.
1828.
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DISTRICT OF MAINE.... TO WIT:
DISTRICT CLERK’S OFFICE.
BE IT REMEMBERED, That on the eighth day of October, A.D. 1828, andin the fifty-third year of the Independence of the United States of America,Shirley & Hyde of said District, have deposited in this office, the title of a book,the right whereof they claim as proprietors, in the words following, to wit.
“Rachel Dyer: A North American Story. By John Neal. Portland.”
In conformity to the act of the Congress of the United States, entitled “AnAct for the encouragement of learning, by securing the copies of maps, chartsand books, to the authors and proprietors of such copies, during the times thereinmentioned;” and also, to an act, entitled “An Act supplementary to an act, entitledAn Art for the encouragement of learning, by securing the copies of maps,charts and books, to the authors and proprietors of such copies, during the timestherein mentioned; and for extending the benefits thereof to the arts of designing,engraving and etching historical and other prints.”
J. MUSSEY, Clerk of the District of Maine.
A true copy as of record,
Attest, J. MUSSEY, Clerk D. C. Maine.
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PREFACE.
I have long entertained a suspicion, all that has beensaid by the novel-writers and dramatists and poets of ourage to the contrary notwithstanding, that personal beautyand intellectual beauty, or personal beauty and moralbeauty, are not inseparably connected with, nor apportionedto each other. In Errata, a work of which as awork, I am heartily ashamed now, I labored long andearnestly to prove this. I made my dwarf a creature ofgreat moral beauty and strength.
Godwin, the powerful energetic and philosophizingGodwin, saw a shadow of this truth; but he saw nothingmore—the substance escaped him. He taught, and hehas been followed by others, among whom are Brown,Scott and Byron, (I observe the chronological order)that a towering intellect may inhabit a miserable body;that heroes are not of necessity six feet high, nor of agodlike shape, and that we may be deceived, if we ventureto judge of the inward by the outward man. Butthey stopped here. They did not perceive, or perceiving,would not acknowledge the whole truth; for if we considera moment, we find that all their great men arescoundrels. Without one exception I believe, their heroesare hypocrites or misanthropes, banditti or worse;while their good men are altogether subordinate andpitiable destitute of energy and wholly without character.
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Now believing as I do, in spite of such overwhelmingauthority, that a man may have a club-foot, or ahump-back, or even red hair and yet be a good man—peradventurea great man; that a dwarf with a distortedshape may