the ideas
I have so far been able to work out for myself about art, considered not
historically, but in its double relation to the artist and the world for
whom he works; ideas which it is my highest ambition should influence
those young enough and powerful enough to act upon them; and, this being
the case, my first thought is to place them before you: it is, you see,
a matter of conversion, and the nearest, most difficult, most desired
convert, is yourself.

To you, therefore, before any one else, must I explain what manner
of book this is, what are its origin and its aims. And first, the
meaning of its title. Logically, this title means nothing; it is a mere
negation, a mere arbitrary combination of letters chosen from sheer
despair to find any name which should tell, what this title certainly
does not, what is the contents of the volume. Yet, a meaning the name
has: a meaning of association. For, even as a snatch of melody will
sometimes, for no apparent reason, haunt us while we are about any
particular work, follow us while we are travelling through a definite
tract of country (as, two years since, Wagner's Spinning Chorus
travelled with me from Mantua to Verona, and from Verona to Venice) in
such a way that the piece of work, the tract of country, bring with
their recollection the haunting tune to our mind; so, also, during the
time of making up this volume, I have been haunted by the remembrance of
that winter afternoon, when last we were together, on the battlements of
Belcaro. Perhaps (if we must seek a reason), because, while driving to
the strange, isolated villa castle, up and down, and round and round the
hills of ploughed-up russet earth, and pale pink leafless brushwood, and
bright green pine-woods, where every sharp road-turning surprises one
with a sudden glimpse of Siena, astride, with towers and walls and
cupolas, on her high, solitary ridge; while dashing up the narrow hedged
lanes whose sere oak and ilex branches brushed across our faces; or,
while looking down from the half-fortified old place on to the endless,
vague, undulating Sienese fields and oak-woods; perhaps, because at
that moment I may, unconscious to myself, have had a vague first desire
to put together more of the helter-skelter contents of the notes over
which we had been looking, and give it you in some intelligible shape.
Perhaps this may have served to set up the association; or perhaps it
was something wholly different, unguessed,