rhetorical artifice of Macaulay is easily spied; it will take
longer to appreciate the moral bias of Carlyle. So with all
writers who insist on forcing some significance from all that
comes before them; and the writer of short studies is bound,
by the necessity of the case, to write entirely in that
spirit. What he cannot vivify he should omit.

Had it been possible to rewrite some of these papers, I hope
I should have had the courage to attempt it. But it is not
possible. Short studies are, or should be, things woven like
a carpet, from which it is impossible to detach a strand.
What is perverted has its place there for ever, as a part of
the technical means by which what is right has been
presented. It is only possible to write another study, and
then, with a new "point of view," would follow new
perversions and perhaps a fresh caricature. Hence, it will
be, at least, honest to offer a few grains of salt to be
taken with the text; and as some words of apology, addition,
correction, or amplification fall to be said on almost every
study in the volume, it will be most simple to run them over
in their order. But this must not be taken as a propitiatory
offering to the gods of shipwreck; I trust my cargo
unreservedly to the chances of the sea; and do not, by
criticising myself, seek to disarm the wrath of other and
less partial critics.

HUGO'S ROMANCES. - This is an instance of the "point of
view." The five romances studied with a different purpose
might have given different results, even with a critic so
warmly interested in their favour. The great contemporary