Excerpt from The History of Pendennis, Vol. 1 of 3: His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends, and His Greatest Enemy Even the gentlemen of our age this is an attempt to describe one of them, no better nor worse than most educated men even these we cannot show as they are, with the notorious foibles and selfishness of their lives and their education. Since the author of Tom Jones was buried, no writer of fiction among us has been permitted to depict to his utmost power a man. We must drape him, and give him a certain conven ticanl simper. Society will not tolerate the Natural in our Art. Many ladies have remonstrated and sub scribers left me, because in the course of the story, I described a young man resisting and afiected by temp tation. My object was to say, that he had the pas sions to feel, and the manliness and generosity to overcome them. You will not hear it is best to know it what moves in the real world, what passes in society, in the clubs, colleges, mess-rooms, - what is the life and talk of your sons. A little more frank ness than is customary has been attempted in this story; with no bad desire on the writer's part, it is hoped, and with no ill consequence to any reader. If truth is not always pleasant; at any rate truth is best, from whatever chair from those whence graver writers or thinkers argue, as from that at which the story-teller sits as he concludes his labor, and bids his kind reader farewell. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.