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Masques & Phases By: Robert Baldwin Ross (1869-1918) |
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BY
ROBERT ROSS LONDON:
ARTHUR L. HUMPHREYS
187 PICCADILLY, W.
1909 The author wishes to express his indebtedness, to Messrs. Smith, Elder
for leave to reproduce 'A Case at the Museum,' which appeared in the
Cornhill of October, 1900; to the Editor of the Westminster Gazette ,
which first published the account of Simeon Solomon; and to the former
proprietors of the Wilsford Press, for kindly allowing other articles to
be here reissued. 'How we Lost the Book of Jasher' and 'The Brand of
Isis' were contributed to two undergraduate publications, The Spirit
Lamp and The Oxford Point of View . To HAROLD CHILD, ESQ.
THE DEDICATION.
MY DEAR CHILD, It is not often the privilege of a contributor to address his former
editor in so fatherly a fashion; yet it is appropriate because you
justified an old proverb in becoming, if I may say so, my literary
parent. Though I had enjoyed the hospitality, I dare not say the
welcome, of more than one London editor, you were the first who took off
the bearing rein from my frivolity. You allowed me that freedom, of
manner and matter, which I have only experienced in undergraduate
periodicals. It is not any lack of gratitude to such distinguished
editors as the late Mr. Henley; or Mr. Walter Pollock, who first accorded
me the courtesies of print in a periodical not distinguished for its
courtesy; or Professor C. J. Holmes, who has occasionally endured me with
patience in the Burlington Magazine ; or Mr. Edmund Gosse, to whom I am
under special obligations; that I address myself particularly to you. But
I, who am not frightened of many things, have always been frightened of
editors. I am filled with awe when I think of the ultramarine pencil
that is to delete my ultramontane views. You were, as I have hinted, the
first to abrogate its use in my favour. When you, if not Consul, were at
least Plancus, I think the only thing you ever rejected of mine was an
essay entitled 'Editors, their Cause and Cure.' It is not included, for
obvious reasons, in the present volume, of which you will recognise most
of the contents. These may seem even to your indulgent eyes a trifle
miscellaneous and disconnected. Still there is a thread common to all,
though I cannot claim for them uniformity. There is no strict adherence
to those artificial divisions of literature into fiction, essay,
criticism, and poetry. Count Tolstoy, however, has shown us that a novel
may be an essay rather than a story. No less a writer than Swift used
the medium of fiction for his most brilliant criticism of life; his
fables, apart from their satire, are often mere essays. Plato, Sir
Thomas More, William Morris, and Mr. H. G. Wells have not disdained to
transmit their philosophy under the domino of romance or myth. Some of
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... Continue reading book >>
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Essay/Short nonfiction |
Literature |
Short stories |
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