every one of them valid, and the most valid of all my reason for choosing
this book, _A Mummer's Wife_, to dedicate to you, is your own
commendation of it the other night when you said to me that no book of mine
in your opinion was more likely to 'live'! To live for five-and-twenty
years is as long an immortality as anyone should set his heart on; for who
would wish to be chattered about by the people that will live in these
islands three hundred years hence? We should not understand them nor they
us. Avaunt, therefore, all legendary immortalities, and let us be content,
Ross, to be remembered by our friends, and, perhaps, to have our names
passed on by disciples to another generation! A fair and natural
immortality this is; let us share it together. Our bark lies in the
harbour: you tell me the spars are sound, and the seams have been caulked;
the bark, you say, is seaworthy and will outlive any of the little storms
that she may meet on the voyage--a better craft is not to be found in my
little fleet. You said yesterevening across the hearthrug, '_Esther
Waters_ speaks out of a deeper appreciation of life;' but you added: 'In
_A Mummer's Wife_ there is a youthful imagination and a young man's
exuberance on coming into his own for the first time, and this is a
quality--'No doubt it is a quality, Ross; but what kind of quality? You did
not finish your sentence, or I have forgotten it. Let me finish it for
you--'that outweighs all other qualities' But does it? I am interpreting
you badly. You would not commit yourself to so crude an opinion, and I am
prepared to believe that I did not catch the words as they fell from your
lips. All I can recall for certain of the pleasant moment when, you were
considering which of my works you liked the best are stray words that may
be arranged here into a sentence which, though it does not represent your
critical judgments accurately, may be accepted by you. You said your
thoughts went more frequently to _A Mummer's Wife_ than to _Esther
Waters_; and I am almost sure something was said about the earlier book
being a more spontaneous issue of the imagination, and that the wandering