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Foreword

prose is the medium of those who have not been granted the gift of poetry. In these pages I have set down recollections that I was not able to shape into poems, although they lived with me for many years; memories of persons, places, feelings, events, many of which must have changed, I do not know how, as my mind dwelt on them. Much of what I saw and felt remained with me more sharply than what I did or what happened to me; and memory is arbitrary. I have drawn here and there on diaries, letters, and other papers. I have changed a few names.

It might have been better for these memories to remain private until I am dead with the friends and relations I write of, but I publish them now partly in order to see them through the press myself.

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