_Suggested by one friend and selected and compiled by another_, _this
volume is less a book than a mosaic of scraps and shreds recovered from
the shot rubbish of some fourteen years of journalism_. _Thus_, _the
notes on Longfellow_, _Balzac_, _Sidney_, _Tourneur_, '_Arabian Nights
Entertainments_,' _Borrow_, _George Eliot_, _and Mr. Frederick Locker are
extracted from originals in_ '_London_'--_a print still remembered with
affection by those concerned in it_; _those on Labiche_, _Champfleury_,
_Richardson_, _Fielding_, _Byron_, _Gay_, _Congreve_, _Boswell_, '_Essays
and Essayists_,' _Jefferies_, _Hood_, _Matthew Arnold_, _Lever_,
_Thackeray_, _Dickens_, _M. Theodore de Banville_, _Mr. Austin Dobson_,
_and Mr. George Meredith from articles contributed to_ '_The Athenaeum_';
_those on Dumas_, _Count Tolstoi's novels_, _and the verse of Dr. Hake
from_ '_The Saturday Review_'; _those on Walton_, _Landor_, _and Heine
from_ '_The Scots Observer_,' '_The Academy_,' _and_ '_Vanity Fair_'
_respectively_; _while the_ '_Disraeli_' _has been pieced together from_
'_London_,' '_Vanity Fair_,' _and_ '_The Athenaeum_'; _the_ '_Berlioz_'
_from_ '_The Scots Observer_' _and_ '_The Saturday Review_'; _the_
'_Tennyson_' _from_ '_The Scots Observer_' _and_ '_The Magazine of Art_';
_the_ '_Homer and Theocritus_' _from_ '_Vanity Fair_' _and the defunct_
'_Teacher_'; _the_ '_Hugo_' _from_ '_The Athenaeum_,' '_The Magazine of
Art_,' _and an unpublished fragment written for_ '_The Scottish Church_.'
_In all cases permission to reprint is hereby gratefully acknowledged_;
_but the reprinted matter has been subjected to such a process of
revision and reconstitution that much of it is practically new_, _while
little or none remains as it was_. _I venture_, _then_, _to hope that
the result_, _for all its scrappiness_, _will be found to have that unity
which comes of method and an honest regard for letters_.