PREFATORY. To matter-of-fact sticklers for sticking to one's text, this book is not unlikely to be an offence throughout. The texts are taken less as standpoints than as starting-points; less as something to make a stand upon, than as something to get away from. To compare them to stones,-they are here used not as foundation-stones, whereon to uprear an orderly structure, but as stepping-stones, for crossing a stream that, like Wordsworth's, wanders at its own sweet will; and the bank once gained, the rambling becomes almost systematically vagrant, up stream, down stream, or against the stream, whithersoever chance suggests or fancy leads. One word, also to the address of matter-of-fact 5377 8 1904 184324 (RECAP) |