ion of the
second volume many irrelevancies have established their relevancy.

It is obvious that were I to continue the life of Michael Fane to the
end of his seventy-second year, his story would run into twenty volumes
as thick as this book. My intention, however, was not to write a life,
but the prologue of a life. He is growing up on the last page, and for
me his interest begins to fade. He may have before him a thousand new
adventures: he may become a Benedictine monk: he may become a society
preacher. I have given you as fully as I could the various influences
that went to mold him. Your imagination of him as a man will be
determined by your prejudice gathered from the narrative of these
influences. I do not identify myself with his opinions: at the same time
I may believe in all of them. He is to me an objective reality: he is
not myself in a looking-glass.

I would like to detain you for a moment with a defense of my occasional
use of archaic and obsolete words. This is not due to any
"preciousness," but to efforts at finding the only word that will say
what I mean. To take two examples: "Reasty" signifies "covered with a
kind of rust and having a rancid taste," and it seems to me exactly to
describe the London air at certain seasons, and also by several
suggestive assonances to convey a variety of subtler effects.
"Inquiline" sounds a pompous word for lodgers, but it has not yet been
sentimentalized like "pilgrim"; it is not an Americanism like
"transients," and it does give to me the sense of a fleeting stay;
whereas lodgers sound dreadfully permanent since they have been given
votes.

We have in the English language the richest and noblest in the world,
and perhaps after this war we shall hear less of the advocates of pure
Saxon, an advocacy which personally I find rather like the attitude of
the plain man who wants to assert himself on his first introduction to a
duke.

There remains for me to apologize for the delay in the appearance of
this volume. You who know how many weeks I have spent ill in bed this
year will forgive me, and through you I make an apology to other readers
who by their expressions of interest in the date of the second volume
have encouraged me so greatly. Finally it strikes me that I have seemed
above to be grumbling at criticism. This is not so. I believe there is
nobody, certainly no young writer who is under such a debt of obligation
as I am to the encouragement and the sympathy