Next, I have addressed them now, because I know that many of them, at
various times, have taken umbrage at certain scenes of Cambridge life drawn
in this book. I do not blame them for having done so. On the contrary, I
have so far acknowledged the justice of their censure, that while I have
altered hardly one other word in this book, I have re-written all that
relates to Cambridge life.
Those sketches were drawn from my own recollections of 1838-1842. Whether
they were overdrawn is a question between me and men of my own standing.
But the book was published in 1849; and I am assured by men in whom I have
the most thorough confidence, that my sketches had by then at least become
exaggerated and exceptional, and therefore, as a whole, untrue; that a
process of purification was going on rapidly in the University; and that I
must alter my words if I meant to give the working men a just picture of
her.
Circumstances took the property and control of the book out of my hand, and
I had no opportunity of reconsidering and of altering the passages. Those
circumstances have ceased, and I take the first opportunity of altering all
which my friends tell me should be altered.
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