Looking back,I realize that what I have written about Charles Strickland must seem very unsatisfactory.I have given incidents that came to my knowledge,but they remain obscure because I do not know the reason that led to them.The strangest,Stricklands determination to become a painter,seems to be arbitrary;and though it must have had causes in the circumstances of his life,I am ignorant of them.From his own conversation I was able to glean nothing.If I were writing a novel,rather than narrating such facts as I know of a curious personality,I should have invented much to account for this change of heart.I think I should have shown a strong vocation in boyhood,crushed by the will of his father or sacrificed to the necessity of earning a living;I should have pictured him impatient of the restraints of life;and in the struggle between his passion for art and the duties of his station I could have aroused sympathy for him.I should so have made him a more imposing figure.Perhaps it would have been possible to see in him a new Prometheus.There was here,maybe,the opportunity......