Page:Essays and Studies - Swinburne (1875).pdf/11



Essays, written at intervals during a space of seven years, are now reissued with no change beyond the correction of an occasional error, the addition of an occasional note, and the excision or modification of an occasional phrase or passage. To omit or to rewrite any part would be to forfeit the one claim which I should care to put up on their behalf; that they give frank and full expression to what were, at the time of writing, my sincere and deliberate opinions. Only where I have detected a positive error or suspected a possible injustice have I changed or cancelled a syllable. As I see no reason to suppress what I have no desire to recant, I have not allowed myself to strike out the rare allusions, which might otherwise have been erased, to such obscure and ephemeral names or matters as may be thought unworthy even of so slight a record as the notice here conferred on them. The one object which gives to this book whatever it may have of unity is the study of art in its imaginative aspects. I have desired above all things to avoid narrowness and dogmatism, and to say simply what I think or perceive to be