Brief scenes, passages of conversation and of narration,
follow one another after the manner of a finished story, alternating with
synopses of the plot, and queries concerning particulars that needed
further study; confidences of the romancer to himself which form
certainly a valuable contribution to literary history. The manuscript
closes with a rapid sketch of the conclusion, and the way in which it is
to be executed. Succinctly, what we have here is a romance in embryo;
one, moreover, that never attained to a viable stature and constitution.
During his lifetime it naturally would not have been put forward as
demanding public attention; and, in consideration of that fact, it has
since been withheld from the press by the decision of his daughter, in
whom the title to it vests. Students of literary art, however, and many
more general readers will, I think, be likely to discover in it a charm
all the greater for its being in parts only indicated; since, as it
stands, it presents the precise condition of a work of fiction in its
first stage. The unfinished "Grimshawe" was another development of the
same theme, and the "Septimius" a later sketch, with a new element
introduced. But the present experimental fragment, to which it has been
decided to give the title of "The Ancestral Footstep," possesses a
freshness and spontaneity recalling the peculiar fascination of those
chalk or pencil outlines with which great masters in the graphic art have
been wont to arrest their fleeting glimpses of a composition still
unwrought.
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