Postscript to Preface
(Written in 1919)
Reading the above “foreword,” and also the pages which follow it, after the immense chasm cleft in our lives and habits by the War, I find little to modify as a result of the delay in publication. What does strike me with something very like a thrill of terror is the appalling egotism of the whole. I can truly say that I feel guiltily aware and ashamed of it. I cannot, however, say that I see my way clear to amend it. If one is rash enough to engage in the gentle pastime of personal reminiscence at all, it is difficult to play it without using the capital “I” for almost every tee shot. I will ask pardon for my presumption in plucking a passage from one of the world’s great classics, to adorn so slight a theme as this, and will conclude in the words of Michael, Lord of Montaigne:—“Thus, gentle Reader, myselfe am the groundworke of my booke: it is then no reason thou shouldst employe thy time about so frivolous and vaine a subject.”1
Footnotes
1 Montaigne’s Essays, Florio’s translation.