Of the PEPYS I can say nothing; for it has been too recently
through my hands; and I still retain some of the heat of
composition. Yet it may serve as a text for the last remark
I have to offer. To Pepys I think I have been amply just; to
the others, to Burns, Thoreau, Whitman, Charles of Orleans,
even Villon, I have found myself in the retrospect ever too
grudging of praise, ever too disrespectful in manner. It is
not easy to see why I should have been most liberal to the
man of least pretensions. Perhaps some cowardice withheld me
from the proper warmth of tone; perhaps it is easier to be
just to those nearer us in rank of mind. Such at least is
the fact, which other critics may explain. For these were
all men whom, for one reason or another, I loved; or when I
did not love the men, my love was the greater to their books.
I had read them and lived with them; for months they were
continually in my thoughts; I seemed to rejoice in their joys
and to sorrow with them in their griefs; and behold, when I
came to write of them, my tone was sometimes hardly courteous
and seldom wholly just.
R. L. S.
CONTENTS.
I. VICTOR HUGO'S ROMANCES
II. SOME ASPECTS OF ROBERT BURNS
III. WALT WHITMAN
IV. HENRY DAVID THOREAU: HIS CHARACTER AND OPINIONS
V. YOSHIDA-TORAJIRO
VI. FRANCOIS VILLON, STUDENT, POET, AND HOUSE-BREAKER
VII.
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