A large proportion of the most interesting quotations in this book was collected between 1874 and 1886. During that period I was under the influence of Richard Hodgson, who was my close friend from childhood. To him directly and indirectly this book is largely indebted.

Hodgson (1855-1905) had a remarkably pure, noble, and lovable character, and was one of the most gifted men Australia has produced. He is known in philosophic circles from some early contributions to Mind and other journals, but is mainly known from his work in psychical research, to which he devoted the best years of his life. Apart from his great ability in other directions, he was endowed, even in youth, with fine taste and a clear and mature literary judgment. This will appear to some extent in the quotations over his name, and the note on p. 208 will give further particulars of his career. He was from two to three years older than myself, and guided me in my early reading. Therefore, indirectly, he has to do with most of the contents of this book.

But, more than this, about one-third of the main quotations (not including the notes which I have only now added) came direct from Hodgson. He left Australia in 1877, but we maintained a voluminous correspondence until 1886. This correspondence contained most of the quotations referred to, and the remainder Hodgson gave me in London on the only occasion I met him after he left Australia. (After 1886 he became so immersed in psychical research, and I in legal work, that our correspondence ceased to be of a literary character.) Thus directly and indirectly Hodgson has much to do with the book—and, if it had been practicable, I would have placed his name on the title-page.

This book is simply one to be taken up at odd moments, like any other collection of quotations. But there are two reasons why it may have some special interest. One reason is that it includes passages from a number of authors who appear to have become forgotten, or, at any rate, to be passing Lethe-wards. We, who dwell in the underworld,[3] cannot, of course, have a complete knowledge of what is known or forgotten in the inner literary circles of England. We can depend only on the books and periodicals that happen to come to our hands, and perhaps should not rely too much on such sources of information. Yet I cannot but think that Robert Buchanan, for example, has become largely forgotten, and apparently this is the case also with a number of other authors from whom I quote. Because of this, I have retained all the passages I had from such authors.

It must be remembered that this book is not an anthology. A commonplace book is usually a collection of reminders made by a young man who cannot afford an extensive library. There is no system in such a collection. A book is borrowed and extracts made from it; another book by the same author is bought and no extract made from it. On the one hand a favourite verse, although well known, is written out for some reason or other; on the other hand hundreds of beautiful poems are omitted. So far from this being an anthology, I have, as a matter of course, omitted many poems that since the seventy-eighty period have become general favourites; and, as regards the most beautiful gems of our literature, they are almost all excluded. There are for example, only a few lines from Shakespeare.

Some exceptions have, however, been made. In a series of word-pictures, a few of the best-known passages will be found. A few others have been included for reasons that will readily appear; they either form part of a series or the reason is apparent from the notes. Apart from these I have retained Blanco White’s great sonnet and “The Night has a thousand eyes,” written by F. W. Bourdillon when an undergraduate at Worcester College, Oxford, because with regard to these I had an interesting and instructive experience. I accidentally discovered that of four well-read men (two at least of them more thorough students of poetry than myself) two were ignorant of the one poem and two of the other. Seeking an explanation, I turned to the anthologies. I could not find in any of them Bourdillon’s little gem until I came to the comparatively recent Oxford Book of Victorian Verse and The Spirit of Man. The Blanco White sonnet I could find nowhere except in collections of sonnets, which in my opinion are little read. It will be observed that in anthologies alone can Blanco White’s one and only poem be kept alive.

The second reason why this book may have a special interest is that it may serve as a reminder to my contemporaries of our stirring thoughts and experiences in the seventies and eighties. How interesting this period was it is difficult to show in a few lines. In pure literature, books of value simply poured from the press. In the closing year, 1889, “One who never turned his back, but marched breast forward” died on the day that his last book, Asolando, was published, leaving Tennyson, an old man of eighty, the sole survivor of the poets of a great period. At almost the same moment “Crossing the Bar” was published.

Apart from literature, the seventies and eighties were an eventful period in science and religion. Darwinism was still causing its tremendous upheaval, and the supposed conflict between religion and science exercised an enormous effect on the minds of men. Evolution had explained so much of the processes in the history of life, that the majority of thinkers at that time imagined that no room was left for the super-natural. Science was supposed to have given a death-blow to religion, and the greatest wave of materialism ever known in the history of the world swept over England and Europe. It is strange how many great thinkers missed what now appears so obvious a fact, that causality still stood behind all law, and that Darwin, like Newton, had merely helped to show the method by which the universe is governed. (It seems to me that James Martineau stood supreme at that time as a man of genius who saw clearly the inherent defect of the whole materialist movement.)

However, agnosticism, materialism, positivism flourished and triumphed. Science, whose dignity had been so long unrecognized, came into her own, and, in her turn, usurped the same dogmatic superior attitude she had resented in ecclesiasticism. On the one hand pessimistic literature and philosophy poured from the press; on the other hand new religions arose to take the place of the old. Theosophy and spiritualism were in evidence everywhere (leading in 1882 to the happy result that the Society for Psychical Research was founded). Harrison, Clifford, Swinburne and others preached the deification of man. There were discords within, as well as foes without the church. The severely orthodox fought against the revelations of Colenso and the higher criticism; Seeley’s Ecce Homo and a host of other works aroused fierce antagonism; Pius IX, who had in 1864 published his Syllabus which would have destroyed modern civilization, proclaimed the infallibility of the Pope in 1870—and in 1872 was deprived of temporal power. Such questions as the literal interpretation and inerrancy of the Bible were the subjects of intense conflict—and especially strange is it to remember the dire struggle of well-intentioned men to maintain the horrible doctrine of eternal punishment. I imagine that this book will assist to some extent in recalling the atmosphere and aroma of that remarkable period.

I have made very little attempt to arrange my quotations—and now wish I had done less in that direction. The book is intended for casual reading, and to arrange it under headings would tend to make it heavy. The element of surprise is more calculated to make the book attractive.

I began the notes that are appended to some of the quotations with the intention of giving only such short, necessary explanations as would be of assistance to the inexperienced reader. When, however, I began to write, I found my pen running away with me. Apart from the usual, ineffectual efforts of one’s youth, I had never before attempted literary work, and for the first time experienced the great pleasure there is in such writing. With the immense variety of subjects in a collection of quotations, one could continue to write over a series of years; but it was necessary to keep the book within reasonable bounds, and, therefore, I had arbitrarily to come to a stop. In these notes I do not claim that there is much, if any, originality,[4] they are mostly recollections of old reading. Still they may serve the important purpose of revivifying old truths (see p. 78).

I have been astonished at the great deal of work this book has involved—and also how much I have needed the assistance of my friends. There were some sixty or seventy quotations in respect to which I had neglected to give any reference to the authors (for the same reason as one did not put the names on photographs of old friends—it seemed impossible that the names could be forgotten). The difficulty of finding even one such quotation is enormous, and we have no British Museum in Adelaide, but only some limited public libraries. However, with the help of my friends I have succeeded in tracing the paternity of most of these “orphans.” In this and other directions I have had the kind assistance of many gentlemen. Of these first and foremost comes Mr. G. F. Hassell, the publisher of the Adelaide edition, who, in his devotion to literature as well as to his own art of printing, is a worthy representative of the old Renaissance printers. He has given me every assistance, has gone through every line, and, as he is both an exceedingly well-read man and also of a younger generation than myself, I have left it to him to decide what should be omitted and what retained in this book. Professor Mitchell has also been so kind as to revise and make suggestions concerning a number of notes on philosophic and other subjects. Professor Darnley Naylor has been uniformly good in revising any notes of a classical nature—though he takes no responsibility whatever for the views I express. Dr. E. Harold Davies has also helped me with two notes on music, in one instance correcting a serious mistake I had made. Sir Langdon Bonython, my friend of many years, has assisted me with practical as well as literary suggestions, and has thrown open his library to me. Mr. Francis Edwards, of High Street, Marylebone, has assisted in my search for references to quotations. Mr. H. Rutherford Purnell, Public Librarian of Adelaide, and his staff have helped me throughout, and Mr. E. La Touche Armstrong, Public Librarian of Melbourne, has gone to great trouble on my account. Miss M. R. Walker has assisted me in various ways, and especially in preparing the very difficult Index of Subjects. Mr. Sydney Temple Thomas has lent me a number of important books I specially required. Others who have helped me in one way or another are two English friends, Mrs. Caroline Sidgwick and Mrs. Rachael Bray, Messrs. J. R. Fowler, H. W. Uffindell, S. Talbot Smith and Dr. J. W. Browne, of Adelaide, Professor Dettmann of New Zealand, Professor Hyslop of New York and Mr. F. C. Govers of the State War Council, Sydney.

For permission to include quotations from their works I thank the following authors: Rev. F. W. Boreham, Mr. F. W. Bourdillon, Mr. A. J. Edmunds, Mr. Edmund Gosse, Mr. Thomas Hardy, O.M., Professor Hobhouse, Mr. Rudyard Kipling, Mr. E. F. Knight, Mr. R. Le Gallienne, Mr. W. S. Lilly, Mr. Robert Loveman, Sir Frederick Pollock, Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, Professor A. H. Sayce, Mrs. Cronwright Schreiner, Mr. J. C. Squire, Mr. Herbert Trench, Mr. Samuel Waddington, Mrs. Humphry Ward, Mr. F. A. Westbury, Mr. F. S. Williamson and Sir Francis Younghusband.

For extracts from the writings of their relatives I am grateful to Lady Arnold, Sir Francis Darwin, Mr. Henry James, The Earl of Lytton, Dr. Greville McDonald, Miss Martineau, Miss Massey, Mr. W. M. Meredith, Mrs. F. W. H. Myers, the Rev. Conrad Noel, Mr. William M. Rossetti, Sir Herbert Stephen and Lord Tennyson. Mr. Piddington has also given much assistance.

I am indebted to the following for quotations from the works of the authors named: of Ruskin to the Ruskin Literary Trustees and their publishers, Messrs. George Allen and Unwin; of Brunton Stephens to Messrs. Angus and Robertson; of C. S. Calverley to Messrs. G. Bell and Sons; of George Eliot to Messrs. William Blackwood & Sons; of James Kenneth Stephen to Messrs. Bowes and Bowes; of Francis Thompson to Messrs. Burns and Oates; of R. L. Stevenson to Messrs. Chatto and Windus and to Messrs. Charles Scribner’s Sons; of Robert Buchanan to Messrs. Chatto and Windus and to Mr. W. E. Martyn; of James Thomson (B.V.) to Messrs. P. J. and A. E. Dobell; of D. G. Rossetti to Messrs. Ellis; of Swinburne to Mr. W. Heinemann; of Mr. Le Gallienne, H. D. Lowry, Stephen Phillips and J. B. Tabb to Mr. John Lane; of R. Loveman to the J. B. Lippincott Co.; of A. K. H. Boyd, R. Jeffries, W. E. H. Lecky and the Rev. James Martineau, to Messrs. Longmans Green & Co.; of Alfred Austin, T. E. Brown, Lewis Carroll, Edward Fitzgerald, F. W. H. Myers, Walter Pater, Lord Tennyson and Charles Tennyson Turner to Messrs. Macmillan & Co.; of V. O’Sullivan to Mr. Elkin Matthews; of Mrs. Elizabeth Waterhouse to Messrs. Methuen & Co.; of Robert Browning to Mr. John Murray; of Dr. Moncure Conway and Sir Alfred Lyall to Messrs. Paul (Kegan), Trench Trubner & Co.; of George Gissing to Mr. James B. Pinker; of John Payne to Mr. O. M. Pritchard, his executor, and to Mr. Thomas Wright; of Sir Edwin Arnold, P. J. Bailey (Festus) and Coventry Patmore to Messrs. George Routledge & Sons; of G. Whyte Melville to Messrs. Ward Lock & Co. (songs and verses); of George MacDonald to Messrs. A. P. Watt & Son; Mr. Rudyard Kipling’s “L’Envoi” is reprinted from Departmental Ditties, by kind permission of the author and Messrs. Methuen & Co.; “To the True Romance” is published by Messrs. Macmillan & Co., to whom I am deeply indebted, not only for this and the permissions mentioned above, but also for much assistance in tracing copyrights. Messrs. Longmans, Green & Co., Mr. John Murray and Messrs. A. P. Watt & Son have been most helpful in this direction, as have also been Messrs. T. B. Lippincott, the Oxford University Press and Messrs. Watts & Co. Messrs. Constable & Co. have generously granted permission for the quotations from George Meredith and, as the representatives in London of the Houghton Mifflin Co. of Boston, Mass., have secured the quotations from the works of American authors published by that Firm, viz., T. B. Aldrich, R. W. Gilder, W. V. Moody, S. M. B. Piatt, E. M. Thomas, C. D. Warner and the Classics of Emerson, Longfellow, Lowell and Whittier. Messrs. G. P. Putnam’s Sons have also given much help; the lines from Anna Reeve Aldrich and R. C. Rogers are published by their New York House. Mr. Martin Seeker joins in the consent given by Mr. Squire for the extract from his poems. I thank the Editor of the Contemporary Review for quotations from the writings of Professor A. Bain and the Rev. R. F. Littledale; and the Editor of the Nineteenth Century for some lines by W. M. Hardinge (Greek Anthology) and an article on Multiplex Personality. I thank also the Society for Psychical Research for an obituary article by F. W. H. Myers on Gladstone, printed in the Journal of that Society.

For any unintentional omissions, oversights, or failures to trace rights I beg to tender my apologies. The distance of Adelaide from the centre of publication may, in some measure, serve as an excuse for such shortcomings.

All profits derived from the sale of this book will be paid to the Red Cross Fund.

J. T. Hackett.

Adelaide.