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PREFACE
I HAVE written these sketches of effort and incident in former years for my friends; and for those of the public who have been pleased by my books.
I have written them therefore, frankly, garrulously, and at ease; speaking, of what it gives me joy to remember, at any length I like-sometimes very carefully of what I think it may be useful for others to know; and passing in total silence things which I have no pleasure in reviewing, and which the reader would find no help in the account of. My described life has thus become more amusing than I expected to myself, as I summoned its long past scenes for present scrutiny:-its main methods of study, and principles of work, I feel justified in commending to other students; and very certainly any habitual readers of my books will understand them better, for having knowledge as complete as I can give them of the personal character which, without endeavour to conceal, I yet have never taken pains to display, and even, now and then, felt some freakish pleasure in exposing to the chance of misinterpretation.1
I write these few prefatory words on my father’s birthday, in what was once my nursery in his old house,-to which he brought my mother and me, sixty-two years since, I being then four years old. What would otherwise in the following pages have been little more than an old
1 [On this subject, see a passage now printed in the Appendix; below, p. 628; and compare the Epilogue to Stones of Venice, Vol. XI. p. 232.]
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[Version 0.04: March 2008]
