gainst it for close upon seventeen
years; because seventeen years is no small slice of a man's life--rather,
so long a time that it has taught me to prize my bruises and prefer that,
if anybody hereafter care to know me, he shall know me as one whose spirit
took its cheer in intervals of a fight against detestable things; that--
let him rank me in talent never so low beside my contemporaries who
preached this doctrine--he shall at least have no excuse but to acquit me
of being one with them in mind or purpose; and lastly, because in these
times few things have brought me such comfort (stern comfort!) as I have
derived from your criticism, so hospitable to ideas, so inflexible in
judging right from wrong. As I have lived lonelier it has been better for
me, and a solace beyond your guessing, to have been reminded that
criticism still lives amongst us and has a Roman spirit.

A. T. QUILLER-COUCH

The Haven,
FOWEY,
April 3rd, 1906.

PREFACE.

My old friend and publisher, Mr. Arrowsmith, maintains that the time has
come for a cheap edition of this book. Should the public endorse that
opinion, he will probably go about pretending that his head is as good as
his heart.

_From a Cornish Window_ first appeared between cloth covers some six or
seven years ago. I see that its Dedication bears the date, April 3rd,
1906. But parts of it were written years before in the old _Pall Mall
Magazine_, under the editorship of Lord Frederic Hamilton (who invented
its title for me), and a few fragments date back almost to undergraduate
days. The book, in short, is desultory to the last degree, and discourses
in varying moods on a variety of topics. Yet, turning the pages again,
I find them curiously and somewhat alarmingly consistent--consistent not
only in themselves, but with their surviving author as he sits here
to-day, using the same pen-holder which he bought for twopence in 1886,
and gazing out of the same window, soon to be exchanged for another with a
view more academic: and 'alarmingly consistent' because (as Emerson has
very justly observed) a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little
minds. To persevere in one fixed outlook upon life may be evidence of
arrested capacity to grow, while on the other hand mere flightiness
is a sure sign that the mind has not even arrived at man's estate.
The best plan seems to be to care not a farthing for consistency or
inconsistency, but to keep the eye turned outwards, and