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From a Cornish Window A New Edition By: Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (1863-1944) |
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By ARTHUR THOMAS QUILLER COUCH.
DEDICATION.
MY DEAR WILLIAM ARCHER, Severe and ruthlessly honest man that you are, you will find that the
levities and the gravities of this book do not accord, and will say so. I plead only that they were written at intervals, and in part for
recreation, during years in which their author has striven to maintain a
cheerful mind while a popular philosophy which he believed to be cheap
took possession of men and translated itself into politics which he knew
to be nasty. I may summarise it, in its own jargon, as the philosophy of
the Superman, and succinctly describe it as an attempt to stretch a part
of the Darwinian hypothesis and make it cover the whole of man's life and
conduct. I need not remind you how fatally its doctrine has flattered, in
our time and in our country, the worst instincts of the half educated:
but let us remove it from all spheres in which we are interested and
contemplate it as expounded by an American Insurance 'Lobbyist,' a few days
ago, before the Armstrong Committee: "The Insurance world to day is the greatest financial proposition in
the United States; and, as great affairs always do, it commands a
higher law. " I have read precisely the same doctrine in a University Sermon preached by
an Archbishop; but there its point was confused by pietistic rhetoric:
the point being that in life, which is a struggle, success has in itself
something divine, by virtue of which it can be to itself a law of right
and wrong; and (inferentially) that a man is relieved of the noble
obligation to command himself so soon and in so far as he is rich enough
or strong enough to command other people. But why (you will ask) do I drag this doctrine into a dedication?
Because, my dear Archer, I have fought against it for close upon seventeen
years; because seventeen years is no small slice of a man's life rather,
so long a time that it has taught me to prize my bruises and prefer that,
if anybody hereafter care to know me, he shall know me as one whose spirit
took its cheer in intervals of a fight against detestable things; that
let him rank me in talent never so low beside my contemporaries who
preached this doctrine he shall at least have no excuse but to acquit me
of being one with them in mind or purpose; and lastly, because in these
times few things have brought me such comfort (stern comfort!) as I have
derived from your criticism, so hospitable to ideas, so inflexible in
judging right from wrong. As I have lived lonelier it has been better for
me, and a solace beyond your guessing, to have been reminded that
criticism still lives amongst us and has a Roman spirit. A. T. QUILLER COUCH The Haven,
FOWEY,
April 3rd, 1906. PREFACE. My old friend and publisher, Mr. Arrowsmith, maintains that the time has
come for a cheap edition of this book. Should the public endorse that
opinion, he will probably go about pretending that his head is as good as
his heart. From a Cornish Window first appeared between cloth covers some six or
seven years ago. I see that its Dedication bears the date, April 3rd,
1906. But parts of it were written years before in the old Pall Mall
Magazine , under the editorship of Lord Frederic Hamilton (who invented
its title for me), and a few fragments date back almost to undergraduate
days. The book, in short, is desultory to the last degree, and discourses
in varying moods on a variety of topics. Yet, turning the pages again,
I find them curiously and somewhat alarmingly consistent consistent not
only in themselves, but with their surviving author as he sits here
to day, using the same pen holder which he bought for twopence in 1886,
and gazing out of the same window, soon to be exchanged for another with a
view more academic: and 'alarmingly consistent' because (as Emerson has
very justly observed) a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little
minds. To persevere in one fixed outlook upon life may be evidence of
arrested capacity to grow, while on the other hand mere flightiness
is a sure sign that the mind has not even arrived at man's estate... Continue reading book >>
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