For a long space of time, ‘Good-bye, reader!’ I have done my best to please you; and though I know that through feebleness, dulness, and iteration my work terminates rather in failure than in triumph, yet you are sure to forgive, for I have done my best!
C. Brontë,
Haworth,
January 17th, 1838.
THE END
NOTES.
[*] Maimoune, a fairy, daughter of Damriel, King or head of a legion of genies.—Arabian Nights Entertainments.—C. W. H.
[*] ‘Lines to the River Aragua’ is the title of a poem by Charlotte Brontë which is mentioned by Mrs. Gaskell in The Life of Charlotte Brontë, 1857, vol. i. p. 94.—C. W. H.
[*] The last four words in this sentence have been erased from the MS.—C. W. H.
[*] The above poem appears to have been composed more than twelve months before the story in which it appears. In The Red Cross Knight and Other Poems, 1917 (a little book printed for private circulation only, in an edition limited to thirty copies), the poem was printed for Mr. T. J. Wise from a manuscript dated July 1831.—C. W. H.