W PREFACE ANDERING among books and enjoying them, I find in a certain sense that, the more I enjoy them, the harder becomes the task of criticism, the less sure one's faith in critical canons, and the fewer the canons themselves. Of one thing, though, I grow more and more sure, that the real business of the critic is to find out what is right with a great work of art,book, song, statue, or picture not what is wrong. Plenty of things may be wrong, but it is what is right that really counts. If the critic's work is to be worth while, it is the great element in the thing that he has to seek and to find-to learn what it is that makes it live and gives it its appeal, so that, as Montaigne said about Plutarch, men "cannot do without" it; why it is that in a world, where everything that can be "scrapped" is scrapped," is thrown aside and forgotten, this thing, this book or picture, refuses to be ignored, but captures and charms men generations after its maker has passed away. With such a quest a man must not be in a hurry, and he does best to linger in company with the great men whose work he wishes to understand, and to postpone criticism to intimacy. This book comes in the end to be a record of personal acquaintances and of enjoyment. But one is never done with knowing the greatest men or the greatest works of art-they carry you on and on, and at the last you feel you are only beginning. That is my experience. I would not say that I know these men, of whom I have written, thoroughly-a man of sense would hardly say that, but I can say that I have enjoyed my work, and that, whatever other people may find it, to me it has been a delight and an illumination. ST JOHN'S COLlege, February 1915. T. R. G. An acute young critic, who saw some of the proofs, has asked me, with a hint of irony, whether Evelyn and Boswell were Puritans or Poets. Any |