to keep it fresh
by taking on new interests (however trivial), and reading new books, but
still comparing them with the old. I think we ought to be especially
careful to read new poetry as we get on in life, if only as a discipline--
as men with increasing waists practise calisthenics--because poetry is
always trying to reach beyond the phenomena of life, and because these are
all the while, if imperceptibly, narrowing us within the round of daily
habit. As the author of _Ionica_ put it (I quote from memory)--

Our feelings lose poetic flow
Soon after thirty years or so:
Professionising modern men
Thenceforth admire what pleased them then.

But on the whole I do not regret this consistency, believing that the
years 1896-1906 laid an almost holy constraint on the few who believed
neither in Sham-Imperialism nor in the Superman, to stand together,
to be stubborn, to refuse as doggedly as possible to bow the knee to these
idols, to miss no opportunity of drawing attention to their feet of clay.

I seem to perceive that the day of the Superman is drawing to its close.
He is a recurring nuisance, like the influenza, and no doubt will afflict
mankind again in due season. But our generation has enjoyed a peculiarly
poisonous variety of him. In his Renaissance guise, whether projected
upon actual history, as in the person of Richard III, or strutting
sublimated through Marlowe's blank verse, he spared at any rate to
sentimentalise his brutality. Our forefathers summed him up in the
byword that an Italianate Englishman was a devil incarnate; but he _had_
the grace of being Italianate. It is from the Germanised avatar--the
Bismarck of the 'Ems telegram,' with his sentimentalising historians and
philosophers--that Europe would seem to be recovering to-day. Well, I
believe that the Christian virtues, the lovable and honourable code of
ancient gentlemen, may always be trusted to win in the long run, and
extrude the impostor. But while his vogue lasts, it may be of service to
keep reminding men that to falsify another man's dispatch is essentially a
stupider action than to tilt at windmills: and that is the main moral of
my book.

Arthur Quiller-Couch.

December 2nd, 1912.

JANUARY.

Should any reader be puzzled by the title of this discursive volume, the
following verses may provide him with an explanation. They were written
some time ago for a lady who had requested, required, requisitio