"Conrad, Joseph - Notes On Life And Letters" - читать интересную книгу автора (Conrad Joseph)

the result of vague and unconfessed fears, and that made their
strength. For myself, with a very definite dread in my heart, I
was careful not to allude to their character because I did not want
the Note to be thrown away unread. And then I had to remember that
the impossible has sometimes the trick of coming to pass to the
confusion of minds and often to the crushing of hearts.

Of the other papers I have nothing special to say. They are what
they are, and I am by now too hardened a sinner to feel ashamed of
insignificant indiscretions. And as to their appearance in this
form I claim that indulgence to which all sinners against
themselves are entitled.

J. C.
1920.




PART I--LETTERS




BOOKS--1905.



I.


"I have not read this author's books, and if I have read them I
have forgotten what they were about."

These words are reported as having been uttered in our midst not a
hundred years ago, publicly, from the seat of justice, by a civic
magistrate. The words of our municipal rulers have a solemnity and
importance far above the words of other mortals, because our
municipal rulers more than any other variety of our governors and
masters represent the average wisdom, temperament, sense and virtue
of the community. This generalisation, it ought to be promptly
said in the interests of eternal justice (and recent friendship),
does not apply to the United States of America. There, if one may
believe the long and helpless indignations of their daily and
weekly Press, the majority of municipal rulers appear to be thieves
of a particularly irrepressible sort. But this by the way. My
concern is with a statement issuing from the average temperament
and the average wisdom of a great and wealthy community, and
uttered by a civic magistrate obviously without fear and without
reproach.