touch, soul to soul. That is why we ask whether such a character can
be the mere evolvement of the artistic mind at work. That is why we
exclaim: 'The man who painted Hamlet must have been painting himself.'
The perfection of the dramatist's work betrays him. For, really and
truly, no man can paint another, but only himself, and what we call
'character painting' is, at the best, but a poor mixing of painter and
painted, a 'third something' between these two; just as what we call
colour and sound are born of the play of undulation upon organism.




INTRODUCTION TO THE SNOWDON EDITION OF 1901

Though written many years ago this story was, for certain personal
reasons easy to guess, withheld from publication--withheld, as _The
Times_ pointed out, because 'with the _Dichtung_ was mingled
a good deal of _Wahrheit_,' But why did I still delay in
publishing it after these reasons for withholding it had passed away?
This is a question that has often been put to me both in print and in
conversation. And yet I should have imagined that the explanation was
not far to seek. It was simply diffidence; in other words it was that
infirmity which, though generally supposed to belong to youth, comes
to a writer, if it comes at all, with years. Undoubtedly there was a
time in my life when I should have leapt with considerable rashness
into the brilliant ranks of our contemporary novelists. But this was
before I had reached what I will call the diffident period in the
life of a writer. And then, again, I had often been told by George
Borrow, and also by my friend Francis Groome, the great living
authority on Romany matters, that there was in England no interest in