PROLOGUE TO ABBEY'S "QUIET LIFE" VEN as one in city pent, EV Dazed with the stir and din of town, Drums on the pane in discontent, And sees the dreary rain come down, Yet, through the dimmed and dripping glass, Beholds, in fancy, visions pass Of Spring that breaks with all her leaves, Weary of human ills and woes, And vaguely craving for repose, Deserts awhile the stage of strife To draw the even, ordered life, The easeful days, the dreamless nights, EPILOGUE. LET the dream pass, the fancy fade! DEDICATION OF "THE STORY OF ROSINA" (TO AN IDEAL READER) WHAT would our modern maids to-day? I watch, and can't conjecture: A dubious tale?-an Ibsen play?— I know not. But this, Child, I know You with my "Dorothy "1-delight You still can read, at any rate, This "STORY OF ROSINA." 1 See ante, P. 104. PROLOGUE TO "EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY VIGNETTES" (THIRD SERIES) "Versate ... Quid valeant humeri."-HOR, Ars Poetica. HOW shall a Writer change his ways? Read his Reviewers' blame, not praise. In blame, as Boileau said of old, There! Let that row of stars extend To hide the faults I mean to mend. Yet something of my Point of View Not mine the march, the counter-march, (Ce superflu, si nécessaire !); I take a page of Some One's life, I don't taboo a touch of scandal, Where faults are weaknesses alone. In studies of Life's seamy side I own I feel no special pride; The Fleet, the round-house, and the gibbets Are not among my prize exhibits; Nor could I, if I would, outdo What Fielding wrote, or Hogarth drew. Yet much I love to arabesque What Gautier christened a "Grotesque;" To take his oddities and "lunes," And drape them neatly with festoons, |