Page:Essays and Studies - Swinburne (1875).pdf/16

xii opposite schools in art or letters. That must in effect be a somewhat elastic definition which should comprise in one term all the subjects of my study or my praise, a somewhat irregular process which should reduce them all to one denomination, a somewhat vague watchword which should marshal them all under one standard. I think upon the whole that having now gathered together these divers waifs of tentative criticism I may leave the babblers and backbiters who prate of "mutual admiration" and the cant of a coterie absorbed in its own self-esteem and fettered by its own passwords, to the ultimate proof or disproof of simple fact and plain evidence. If I am in deed one of those unfortunates who can see nothing good outside their own sect of partisans, it will not be denied that the sect to which I belong must be singularly comprehensive; nor will it be questioned that I am singularly fortunate in the variety and the eminence of my supposed allies. I would not be betrayed into any show of egotism or recrimination; but I thought it best not to let these reprints go forth together for the first time on their own account without a word of remark on their object and their scope. They are here arranged according to scale and subject, with the date appended when necessary; and have now but to show for themselves whether or not they can pretend to any more noticeable or more vital quality than that of sincere desire and studious effort to see the truth and speak it.