ON indexing this volume, as with Vols. I and IV which are already indexed
and as, no doubt, will be the case with any that I may live to index
later, I am alarmed at the triviality of many of these notes, the
ineptitude of many and the obvious untenableness of many that I should
have done much better to destroy.
Elmsley, in one of his letters to Dr. Butler, says that an author is the
worst person to put one of his own works through the press (_Life of Dr.
Butler_, I, 88). It seems to me that he is the worst person also to make
selections from his own notes or indeed even, in my case, to write them.
I cannot help it. They grew as, with little disturbance, they now stand;
they are not meant for publication; the bad ones serve as bread for the
jam of the good ones; it was less trouble to let them go than to think
whether they ought not to be destroyed. The retort, however, is obvious;
no thinking should have been required in respect of many—a glance should
have consigned them to the waste-paper basket. I know it and I know that
many a one of those who look over these books—for that they will be
looked over by not a few I doubt not—will think me to have been a greater
fool than I probably was. I cannot help it. I have at any rate the
consolation of also knowing that, however much I may have irritated,
displeased or disappointed them, they will not be able to tell me so; and
I think that, to some, such a record of passing moods and thoughts good,
bad and indifferent will be more valuable as throwing light upon the
period to which it relates than it would have been if it had been edited
with greater judgment.
Besides, Vols. I and IV being already bound, I should not have enough to
form Vols. II and III if I cut out all those that ought to be cut out.
[June, 1898.]
P.S.—If I had re-read my preface to Vol. IV, I need not have written the
above.