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6 FOREWORD
The idea is gone, and with it, no doubt, the
complete significance of the article. I have
botched and cobbled, but at best I have but
patched a rent. I hope, however, that I have
not spared many of those trusty veterans who,
occasionally even in our best weekly and
regularly in our morning and evening papers,
are expected to do duty for sense.
Wherever the blue pencil
or standardized
phrase has left too deep a wound or gross a
blemish I have had to rewrite. And, as I have
rarely succeeded in recovering the original idea,
I have had to borrow from my later thought.
Of such patching I have been as thrifty as
possible : also, I have not attempted to
square the opinions and sentiments of early
days with my later pronouncements, so, I make
no doubt, some very clever readers will have
the
pleasure of catching me in inconsistency.
If they are
really clever they will catch me in
worse things than that, in puerility
for instance,
and affectation, to say nothing of blasphemy
and sedition. As for consistency, I seem
consistently to have cared much for four
things Art, Truth, Liberty and Peace. I was
never much in sympathy with my age.
With my youthful style
I should not venture
to tamper even were I conscious of any im-
portant change in my theory of composition
or power of expression. And I am not.