It is not good that a book should be alone: this is a companion volume
to _A Bunch of Everlastings_. 'O God,' cried Caliban from the abyss,
O God, if you wish for our love,
Fling us _a handful of stars_!
The Height evidently accepted the challenge of the Depth. Heaven
hungered for the love of Earth, and so the stars were thrown. I have
gathered up a few, and, like children with their beads and berries, have
threaded them upon this string. It will be seen that they do not all
belong to the same constellation. Most of them shed their luster over
the stern realities of life: a few glittered in the firmament of
fiction. It matters little. A great romance is a portrait of humanity,
painted by a master-hand. When the novelist employs the majestic words
of revelation to transfigure the lives of his characters, he does so
because, in actual experience, he finds those selfsame words indelibly
engraven upon the souls of men. And, after all, _Sydney Carton's Text_
is really _Charles Dickens' Text_; _Robinson Crusoe's Text_ is _Daniel
Defoe's Text_; the text that stands embedded in the pathos of _Uncle
Tom's Cabin_ is the text that Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe had enthroned
within her heart. Moreover, to whatever group these splendid orbs
belong, their deathless radiance has been derived, in every case, from
the perennial Fountain of all Beauty and Brightness.
Frank W. Boreham.
Armadale, Melbourne, Australia.
I