shall find me, the germs of all I have written are in the "Confessions,"
"Esther Waters" and "Modern Painting," my love of France--the country as
Pater would say of my instinctive election--and all my prophecies.
Manet, Degas, Whistler, Monet, Pissaro, all these have come into their
inheritance. Those whom I brushed aside, where are they? Stevenson, so
well described as the best-dressed young man that ever walked in the
Burlington Arcade, has slipped into nothingness despite the journalists
and Mr Sidney Colvin's batch of letters. Poor Colvin, he made a mistake,
he should have hopped on to Pater.

Were it not for a silly phrase about George Eliot, who surely was no
more than one of those dull clever people, unlit by any ray of genius, I
might say with Swinburne I have nothing to regret, nothing to withdraw.
Maybe a few flippant remarks about my private friends; but to withdraw
them would be unmanly, unintellectual, and no one may re-write his
confessions.

A moment ago I wrote I have nothing to regret except a silly phrase
about George Eliot. I was mistaken, there is this preface. If one has
succeeded in explaining oneself in a book a preface is unnecessary, and
if one has failed to explain oneself in the book, it is still more
unnecessary to explain oneself in a preface.

GEORGE MOORE.




Confessions of a Young Man