VILEROY;

OR, THE

HORRORS OF ZINDORF CASTLE.

A ROMANCE OF CHIVALRY.

 

 

—————

"Gate, tower, and moat, and dungeon keep,
Seemed mouldering to decay;
As though the devastating winds
For years had held their sway."

——"oh, more than beautiful,
Stay yet a space, if that ye be not mortal,
And let me witch mine eyes with gazing on thee,
The brightest, purest fancy, nursing in its own creations
Amid the dreary solitude of nature, could not build
In the thin air a creature like to thee.
Oh! stay, and let mime eyes be sated with thy beauty,
That when I turn my gaze on meaner objects,
The image of thy loveliness may, like the sun,
obscure aught else."

—————

LONDON:

PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY E. LLOYD, 231, SHOREDITCH.

 

 

 

 

 

[iii]

PREFACE.

—————

THE very great success that has attended the production of the Romance of "VILEROY; OR, THE HORRORS OF ZINDORF CASTLE," has been most gratifying to the Author upon several distinct grounds.

It shows that the taste for the chivalric romances of the middle ages—those times when honour

"Felt a stain like a wound!"

is by no means extinct among us. Those feelings of high honour and romantic virtue, which lent a charm to feudalism, still beat responsive in many a breast; and it has been the Author’s study in this production to render vice detestable more by contrasting it with virtue than by painting it in its own hideous colours.

The unprecedented success of the work cannot fail to gratify both Author and Publisher; and if anything could incite them to further exertions to please their very numerous patrons, it would be certainly the marked popularity of works like the present, upon which no pains have been spared to render them acceptable.

vi

The Author in here announcing a forthcoming work by his hand, which will be immediately published by Mr. LLOYD, feels that he cannot part from the readers of "VILEROY" more appropriately than by saying with POPE:

"Sweet sounds please us in succession, because at the second we have still the lingering beauty of the first in our ears to add to its own charms."

The Author presumes, therefore, to hope that his forthcoming work will not be injured by the recollection of "VILEROY; OR, THE HORRORS OF ZINDORF CASTLE."

 

THE AUTHOR.



Part 1.