Excerpt from The King of Alsander But if I know you aright, appreciative and generous Public, you look for more than this in these tragic days of social unrest, and you will be most dissatisfied with my efiorts to please you. For you a king is a shadow, a madman a person to be shut up, a scholar a fool, a grocer a trades man, a consul an inferior grade of diplomatic ofiicer, and a Jew a Jew. You will demand to know what panacea is preached in this novel as a sovran remedy for the dismal state of affairs in England. With what hope do I delude the groan ing poor: with what sarcasm insult the insulting rich What is the meaning of my apparent joyousness What has grim iron-banging Eng land to do with sunshine, dancing, adventure and, above all, with Poets matters of ethics are frequently discusset course of my story, and the earnest inqui learn much from this book concerning t purpose and origin of his existence. To ment and its problems I have given pa attention, and the observant reader ma from these subtle pages a complete theor Fallacy of the Picturesque. Only I imp public to forgive the Poet his proverbial to remember that truth is still truth, thm in harlequin raiment, and thought still though hinted and not explained. 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.