If,
then, instead of cutting out, say fifty pages, I have been compelled to
add about sixty invita Minerva--the blame rests neither with my publisher
nor with me, but with the copyright laws. Nevertheless I can assure the
reader that, though I have found it an irksome task to take up work which
I thought I had got rid of thirty years ago, and much of which I am
ashamed of, I have done my best to make the new matter savour so much of
the better portions of the old, that none but the best critics shall
perceive at what places the gaps of between thirty and forty years occur.
Lastly, if my readers note a considerable difference between the literary
technique of "Erewhon" and that of "Erewhon Revisited," I would remind
them that, as I have just shown, "Erewhon" look something like ten years
in writing, and even so was written with great difficulty, while "Erewhon
Revisited" was written easily between November 1900 and the end of April
1901. There is no central idea underlying "Erewhon," whereas the attempt
to realise the effect of a single supposed great miracle dominates the
whole of its successor. In "Erewhon" there was hardly any story, and
little attempt to give life and individuality to the characters; I hope
that in "Erewhon Revisited" both these defects have been in great measure
avoided.
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