A DEFENCE OF PATRIOTISM


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_IN DEFENCE OF A NEW EDITION

The reissue of a series of essays so ephemeral and even superfluous may
seem at the first glance to require some excuse; probably the best
excuse is that they will have been completely forgotten, and therefore
may be read again with entirely new sensations. I am not sure, however,
that this claim is so modest as it sounds, for I fancy that Shakespeare
and Balzac, if moved to prayers, might not ask to be remembered, but to
be forgotten, and forgotten thus; for if they were forgotten they would
be everlastingly re-discovered and re-read. It is a monotonous memory
which keeps us in the main from seeing things as splendid as they are.
The ancients were not wrong when they made Lethe the boundary of a
better land; perhaps the only flaw in their system is that a man who had
bathed in the river of forgetfulness would be as likely as not to climb
back upon the bank of the earth and fancy himself in Elysium.

If, therefore, I am certain that most sensible people have forgotten
the existence of this book--I do not speak in modesty or in pride--I
wish only to state a simple and somewhat beautiful fact. In one respect
the passing of the period during which a book can be considered current
has afflicted me with some melancholy, for I had intended to write
anonymously in some daily paper a thorough and crushing exposure of the
work inspired mostly by a certain artistic impatience of the too
indulgent tone of the critiques and the manner in which a vast number of