ALROY.

ROMANCES,

BY

B. DISRAELI, M.P.

AUTHOR OF "CONINGSBY" AND "SYBIL."

Second Edition.

IN THREE VOLUMES.

VOL. I.

LONDON:

HENRY COLBURN, PUBLISHER;

GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET.

1846.

831.

PREFACE

ΤΟ

CONTARINI FLEMING.

THE author proposed to himself, in writing "The Psychological Romance," a subject that has ever been held one of the most difficult and refined, and which is virgin in the imaginative literature of every country: namely, the development and formation of the poetic character. It has, indeed, been sometimes incidentally treated, and partially illustrated by writers of the highest class, as for instance Göthe in his "Wilhelm Meister," where are expounded, with so much felicity, the mysteries of predisposition; and the same illustrious author has, in his capricious memoirs, favoured us with much of his individual experience of self-formation; in this resembling preceding