immortal sonnets--among them are Milton, Wordsworth, and Keats.
Thus the sonnet is a thing which every poet thinks it worth while to
try at; like Felix Arvers, he may be made immortal by a single
sonnet. Even I have written one too many! Every anthologist wants
to anthologise it (The Odyssey); it never was a favourite of my own,
though it had the honour to be kindly spoken of by Mr. Matthew
Arnold.

On the other hand, no man since Francois Villon has been
immortalised by a single ballade--Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan?

To speak in any detail about these poor ballades would be to indite
a part of an autobiography. Looking back at the little book, 'what
memories it stirs' in one to whom


'Fate has done this wrong,
That I should write too much and live too long.'


The Ballade of the Tweed, and the Rhymes a la Mode, were dedicated
to the dearest of kinsmen, a cricketer and angler. The Ballade of
Roulette was inscribed to R. R., a gallant veteran of the Indian
Mutiny, a leader of Light Horse, whose father was a friend of Sir
Walter Scott. He was himself a Borderer, in whose defeats on the
green field of Roulette I often shared, long, long ago.

So many have gone 'into the world of light' that it is a happiness
to think of him to whom The Ballade of Golf was dedicated, and to
remember that he is still capable of scoring his double century at