TO MY CHILDREN To Irene, my first-born, who may some day, I hope, write worthy books of her own; to dear Philip, not less near to us because he stands in that Light of which our summer sunshine is but the shadow; to Helen, whose love makes household ministries divine; to Mary, the mighty book-girl, with her forward gaze towards the mathematical tripos; and to the twelve-yearsold Lancelot, who thinks that I should be better employed in celebrating Stoddart's team than in writing such "rot" as is to be found in these and previous pages— this little book is dedicated by Their loving father 7. ASHCROFT NOBLE. A NOTE OF COURTESY. FEW books really demand a preface, and this is not one of the few. A word of grateful acknowledgment is, however, required of me. Some of the following essays appear for the first time; two are reprinted from a little book of mine, which has long been unprocurable; but the large remainder consists of papers which have previously been published in various magazines and journals. For kindly permission to gather them into this volume, my thanks are due to my dear friend, Mr R. H. Hutton of the Spectator, and to the courteous editors of Longman's Magazine, the Bookman, the Leisure Hour, the Literary World, Chambers's Journal, Literary Opinion, and the Westminster Gazette. As I am in duty bound to write these few prefatory sentences, I would like to explain an omission which may seem almost unpardonable to lovers of poetry. The essay on Some Skylark Poems was written and published prior to the appearance of Mr William Watson's supremely beautiful lyric, The First Skylark of Spring, the latest, the tenderest, and, as some of us think, the loveliest flower in this small but precious anthology. Of the entire mass of Mr Watson's work, which I have known and loved for twenty years, I hope, if life and strength be prolonged, to write in some future volume. 7. A. N. |