admirably composed prefaces, those egotistical
self-criticisms so full of literary pugnacity, in an age when pluck in
a poet needed searching for. I often say to folk who deplore Bernard
Shaw's prefatory egotism that if they would read Dryden they would
discover that Shaw is only up to his own masterly old game of
imitating his predecessor's tactics. But Shaw is quite safe. He knows
people do not read the literature of their own land nowadays.

I had a laugh last evening all to myself when I noticed that, in a
hasty re-arrangement of my book-shelves, _Gorky_ stood shouldering old
_Chaucer_! Could disparity go further? And yet each is a master of his
craft, each does his work with skill--with "trade finish," as we say.
And so it seemed to me that, after all, one might leave the "Romaunt
of the Rose" side by side with "Three of Them," on condition that each
is read and re-read, if only for the workmanship.

Cellini, too, draws me as regularly and irresistibly as the moon makes
our tides. Here is richness. The breathless impetuosity of the whole
narrative, the inconceivable truculence of the man, fascinates me,
who am so different. When I looked at that "Perseus" in Florence, when
I leaned over the medal-cases in South Kensington and stared hard at
the work of his murderous hands, I felt awed and baffled. How could he
do it--he with his dagger just withdrawn from some rival's shoulders,
his fingers just unclasped from some enemy's windpipe? Then, again,
the virile cheerfulness of the man! God is ever on his side, Justice
is his guardian angel. And while musing upon him some few days back, I
fell to wondering if I might not imitate him. I mean, why could not I
take the life of some such man (and I know one at least who could sit
for the portrait), and write a fictitious autobiography in that
truculent, bombastic, interesting style? I have the material, and I
believe I could do it. What do you think, old friend? It is already
one of my plans for the future, when I am done wandering.

That last word reminds me of my Borrow. Who can describe the
bewildering delight when one first plunges into "Lavengro" and the
"Romany Rye"? To take them from the book-case and carry them out to
Barnet, where the Kingmaker fell, and read with the wind in your face
and the Great North Road before your eyes--is that too much to ask of
mine ancient Londoner? Believe me, the thing is worth doing. No man
ever put so divine an optimism into his bo