Black Beetles in Amber

by Ambrose Bierce

IN EXPLANATION

IN EXPLANATION

Many of the verses in this book are republished, with considerable
alterations, from various newspapers. The collection includes few not
relating to persons and events more or less familiar to the people of
the Pacific Coast--to whom the volume may be considered as especially
addressed, though, not without a hope that some part of the contents
may be found to have sufficient intrinsic interest to commend it to
others. In that case, doubtless, commentators will be "raised up" to
make exposition of its full meaning, with possibly an added meaning
read into it by themselves.

Of my motives in writing, and in now republishing, I do not care to
make either defense or explanation, except with reference to those
persons who since my first censure of them have passed away. To one
having only a reader's interest in the matter it may easily seem that
the verses relating to those might more properly have been omitted
from this collection. But if these pieces, or, indeed, if any
considerable part of my work in literature, have the intrinsic worth
which by this attempt to preserve some of it I have assumed, their
permanent suppression is impossible, and it is only a question of when
and by whom they shall be republished. Some one will surely search
them out and put them in circulation.

I conceive it the right of an author to have his fugitive work
collected in his lifetime; and this seems to me especially true of one
whose work, necessarily engendering animosities, is peculiarly exposed
to challenge as unjust. That is a charge that can be best examined
before time has effaced the evidence. For the death of a man of whom
I may have written what I venture to think worthy to live I am no way
responsible; and, however sincerely I may regret it, I can hardly be
expected to consent that it shall affect my fortunes. If the satirist
who does not accept the remarkable doctrine that while condemning the
sin he should spare the sinner were bound to let the life of his work
be coterminous with that of his subject his were a lot of peculiar
hardship.

Persuaded of the validity of all this, I have not hesitated to reprint
even certain "epitaphs" which, once of the living, are now of the
dead, as all the others must eventually be. The objection inheres
in all forms of applied satire--my understanding of whose laws and
liberties is at least derived from reverent study of the masters.
That in respect of matters herein mentioned I have but followed their
practice can be shown by abundant instance and example.

AMBROSE BIERCE.