against Mr. Froude's libels. The service thus rendered by Mr. Salmon
possesses a double significance and value in my estimation. In the
first place, as being the work of a European of high position, quite
independent of us (who testifies concerning Negroes, not through
having gazed at them from balconies, decks of steamers, or the seats
of moving carriages, but from actual and long personal intercourse
with them, which the internal evidence of his book plainly proves to
have been as sympathetic as it was familiar), and, secondly, as the
work of an individual entirely outside of our race, it has been
gratefully accepted by myself as an incentive to self-help, on the
same more formal and permanent lines, in a matter so important to the
status which we can justly claim as a progressive, law-abiding, and
self-respecting section of Her Majesty's liege subjects.

[18] It behoves me now to say a few words respecting this book as a
mere literary production.

Alexander Pope, who, next to Shakespeare and perhaps Butler, was the
most copious contributor to the current stock of English maxims,
says:

"True ease in writing comes from Art, not Chance,
As those move easiest who have learnt to dance."

A whole dozen years of bodily sickness and mental tribulation have
not been conducive to that regularity of practice in composition
which alone can ensure the "true ease" spoken of by the poet; and
therefore is it that my style leaves so much to be desired, and
exhibits, perhaps, still, more to be pardoned. Happily, a quarrel
such as ours with the author of "The English in the West Indies"