PREFACE


Of the following essays, five are new, and were written for this
volume. They are the paper on Mr. R. L. Stevenson, the "Letter to a
Young Journalist," the study of Mr. Kipling, the note on Homer, and
"The Last Fashionable Novel." The article on the author of "Oh, no!
we never mention Her," appeared in the New York Sun, and was
suggested by Mr. Dana, the editor of that journal. The papers on
Thackeray and Dickens were published in Good Words, that on Dumas
appeared in Scribner's Magazine, that on M. Theodore de Banville in
The New Quarterly Review. The other essays were originally written
for a newspaper "Syndicate." They have been re-cast, augmented,
and, to a great extent, re-written.

A. L.




ALEXANDRE DUMAS



Alexandre Dumas is a writer, and his life is a topic, of which his
devotees never weary. Indeed, one lifetime is not long enough
wherein to tire of them. The long days and years of Hilpa and
Shalum, in Addison--the antediluvian age, when a picnic lasted for
half a century and a courtship for two hundred years, might have
sufficed for an exhaustive study of Dumas. No such study have I to