action. He generally prefaced his reading with an
explanation, the substance of which has been given by
Dr Mann in his Maud Vindicated.

¹ "At the opening of the drama, the chief person or
hero of the action is introduced with scenery and incidents
artistically disposed around his figure, so as to make the
reader at once acquainted with certain facts in his history,
which it is essential should be known. Although still
a young man, he has lost his father some years before
by a sudden and violent death, following immediately
upon unforeseen ruin brought about by an unfortunate
speculation in which the deceased had engaged. Whether
the death was the result of accident, or self-inflicted in
a moment of despair, no one knows, but the son's mind
has been painfully possessed by a suspicion of villainy
and foul play somewhere, because an old friend of his
family became suddenly and unaccountably rich by the
same transaction that had brought ruin to the dead.
Shortly after the decease of his father, the bereaved
young man, by the death of his mother, is left quite alone
in the world. He continues thenceforth to reside in the
retired village in which his early days have been spent,
but the sad experiences of his youth have confirmed the
bent of a mind constitutionally prone to depression and
melancholy. Brooding in loneliness upon miserable
memories and bitter fancies, his temperament as a matter
of course becomes more and more morbid and irritable.
He can see nothing in human affairs that does not
awaken in him disgust and contempt. Evil glares out
from all social arrangements, and unqualified meanness
and selfishness appear in every human form, so he keeps
to himself and chews the cud of cynicism and discontent
apart from his kind. Such in rough outline is the figure
the poet has sketched as the foundation and centre of his

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