Excerpt from A Memoir of Charles Mayne Young, Tragedian, 1871: With Extracts From His Son's Journal

I have been unaffectedly surprised and gratified by the reception this book has met with at the hands both of the Press and the Public. Tolerant as my critics have been of my negligences and ignorances, none of them can be more conscious of them than I am myself. It did not need their forbearance to quicken my own sense of the meagreness of the Biographical Sketch of Charles Young, which is in truth, a mere skeleton, devoid alike of marrow and of muscle.

It was deficiency of material for a "Life" which induced me to adopt the more appropriate title of a "Memoir" - thereby simply recording such personal traits or family facts connected with my subject as dwelt on my "Memory." Still, I am persuaded it had been far better if I had included my recollections of him among those of his contemporaries. But the truth is it was only under the shelter of his name that I should ever have presumed to publish anything of my own.

Entirely to alter the plan of the book now, would be something like a literary fraud, so I must e'en be content to leave it as it is. It was long before I could be persuaded to undertake a task for which I felt myself unfit: and the kind friends to whose judgment I deferred must, I think, on reading these pages, have perceived that I was justified in my scruples.

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