Excerpt from The Lord of the Manor, Vol. 1 of 2: Or, Lights and Shades of Country Life

As to which requires the greatest demand upon the faculty called invention, History, Biography, or Fiction, we shall not presume to determine: though as the first is often remote, and the second so nearly allied to the privacy, privation, and the struggles of genius, ever to be very communicative, we are of opinion that fiction needs the least of all.

Fiction, then, seems to be only a modest way of introducing truth: a sly means of gaining it a reception, for, of all inductive writing, none of the theories is so much indebted to skill and contrivance to gain it a lurking-place in the temple of knowledge, as this hazardous commodity - truth.

It will probably be seen that we have had to encounter some of its difficulties in the following sheets, but still, in a moment of temerity, we resolved not to manifest them further than by a mere change of scene, date, and a few names - the rest being Truth in his naked, and so of course, in his least pleasing form - his opposite character gaining a readier welcome, and inducing more sincere pleasure if his attire be august enough, his impudence modest enough, and the rattle of his pocket-coins be equal to the patented merit found in his note-case.

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