the greatest poets--Ruskin and Pater for example--have chosen prose for
their instrument of expression. If that theory is true of literature--and
I ask you to accept it as true--how much truer is it of journalism, at
least such journalism as mine; though I see a great gulf between
literature and journalism far greater than that between fiction and essay-
writing. The line, too, dividing the poetry of Keats from the prose of
Sir Thomas Browne is far narrower, in my opinion, than the line dividing
Pope from Tennyson. And I say this mindful of Byron's scornful couplet
and the recent animadversions of Lord Morley.

There are essays in my book cast in the form of fiction; criticism cast
in the form of parody; and a vein of high seriousness sufficiently
obvious, I hope, behind the masques and phases of my jesting. The
psychological effects produced by works of art and archaeology, by drama
and books, on men and situations--such are the themes of these passing
observations.

And though you find them like an old patchwork quilt I hope you will
laugh, in token of your acceptance, if not of the book at least of my
lasting regard and friendship for yourself.

Ever yours,
ROBERT ROSS.

5 _Hertford Street_, _Mayfair_, _W_.




A CASE AT THE MUSEUM.