pinions were always
impersonal; and now as their manner rather than their make has been
slightly tempered, it may surprise the belated reader to learn that it
was the belief of one English critic that their author had "placed
himself beyond the pale of decency" by them. It ought to be less
surprising that, since these dreadful words were written of him, more
than one magnanimous Englishman has penitently expressed to the author
the feeling that he was not so far wrong in his overboldly hazarded
convictions. The penitence of his countrymen is still waiting
expression, but it may come to that when they have recurred to the
evidences of his offence in their present shape.

KITTERY POINT, MAINE, July, 1909.

MY LITERARY PASSIONS

I. THE BOOKCASE AT HOME

To give an account of one's reading is in some sort to give an account of
one's life; and I hope that I shall not offend those who follow me in
these papers, if I cannot help speaking of myself in speaking of the
authors I must call my masters: my masters not because they taught me
this or that directly, but because I had such delight in them that I
could not fail to teach myself from them whatever I was capable of
learning. I do not know whether I have been what people call a great
reader; I cannot claim even to have been a very wise reader; but I have
always been conscious of a high purpose to read much more, and more
discreetly, than I have ever really done, and probably it is from the
vantage-ground of this good intention that I shall sometimes be found
writing here rather than from the facts of the case.

But I am pretty sure that I began right, and that if I had always kept
the lofty level which I struck at the outset I should have the right to
use authority in these reminiscences without a bad conscience. I shall
try not to use authority, however, and I do not expect to speak here of
all my reading, whether it has been much or little, but only of those
books, or of those authors that I have felt a genuine passion for. I
have known such passions at every period of my life, but it is mainly of
the loves of my youth that I shall write, and I shall write all the more
frankly because my own youth now seems to me rather more alien than that
of any other person.

I think that I came of a reading race, which has always loved literature
in a way, and in spite of varying fortunes and many changes. From a
letter of my great-grandmother's writt