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FOREWORD 7
I write more fluently nowadays and therefore,
probably, worse. It cannot be helped. It
charms me to notice as I read these essays
with what care and conscience they are done.
Magna cum euro, atque diligentia scripsit
they are not far from Latin Grammar days.
Precisely on account of these qualities they
have suffered much from editorial amendment,
and on their account I have been conservative
in a matter where another policy would, I
dare say, have been more to the taste of some
connoisseurs. The matter in question is that
of the grand editorial " We." That, as you
may suppose, was the person in which Pallas
habitually addressed her attentive suppliants ;
that was the person in which these articles
were written ; and experiment has shown
that to substitute " I," " my," and " mine "
for " "
we," our," and " ours," destroys
invariably the texture of the prose. Whether
this early prose of mine was good is not for
me to decide ; but that it was closely knit is
indisputable, and a sensitive critic who cared
to tease himself with trifles could discover,
I fancy, from stylistic evidence, just which
passages have been interpolated.
The articles borrowed from the Burlington
Magazine, the Nation, the New Statesman,
the International Journal of Ethics, and the
Cambridge Magazine to the editors of which