PREFACE.
IT would be absurd to suppose that it will not seem clear, to whatever readers this little book may find here, that one of the principal characters of the Dialogue is a man for whom we all, I think, feel more interest, admiration, and respect than any other among us. That this is so in reality, I must beg to deny, and I hope that, when I state that I neither have myself, nor know anyone who has, the honour of his acquaintance—nay, that I have never even seen him—I hope that I shall stand acquitted of all charges of personality. As for the other characters, there will too, I daresay, be found people ready to declare who are the originals, and to explain everything which is inconsistent with their theory by ascribing it to designed mystification on the part of the Author. For this, it seems, is an occupation like another. The Author believes that so much of a man's life as is public belongs to the public, and is at the fair use of the public's literary analysts, videlicet the critics, and that it is by no means an unfair use, to take such a life and freely present it in that individual form which it actually has to us in our moments of imagination and reflection. It seems, then, to him foolish, in considering, (to take it in the form of a well-known example), a book like D'Israeli's "Lothair" or "Endymion," to be trying to identify the characters with actual men. D'Israeli simply uses as much of actual men and actual events as he requires for his criticism of the time he is portraying, and is careless of the rest. I see here no attempt at mystification. I simply see an artist picking out the choicest materials he has to hand.
As regards both the Dialogue and the Essays, I would like to point out that they are professedly didactic, and, as such, are of course cast into the form which I believe most calculated to achieve their object. I am sure that I have neither the intention nor the wish to impugn the competency of the australian Press to deal with things australian. I am myself
