The critic of our dreams--Mr. Bennett's and mine--has yet to be found. You will not imagine, surely, that I am putting myself forward as a candidate? Here you will find very few of the virtues and some, I suspect, of the critical vices to which I have alluded in this letter. But you need not fear, my dear Whitworth, that I am now going to tax your good nature by an elaborate defence of these essentially insignificant papers. They are an odd lot, and I think there are but two--the two last--that I am not a little ashamed of reprinting. Clearly, were I now to write on the same themes I should have something very different to say and should say it differently. Honestly, I believe these things are worth reading; I can say no more for them and I shall hold him generous who says as much. But the pleasure I shall derive from seeing them printed and off my hands will be as great almost as that which I felt when, four years ago, you, or your firm rather, did me the honour of publishing a book to which I attached, and continue to attach, a good deal of importance. Here I am harvesting my wild oats; and that deed done, I expect to feel what a regular but rather humdrum sinner must feel as he returns from Confession. Quit of my past, I shall be ready to turn over a new leaf. I shall be able, if I please, to approach life from a new angle and try my luck in unexplored countries, so far, that is, as the European situation permits. C. B. _February 1918._ MONTAIGNE IN FACSIMILE[1] [Sidenote: _Athenaeum Jan. 1913_] Let it be understood at once that the appearance of this magnificent work is a bibliophilic rather than a literary event. The literary event was the publication by M. Fortunat Strowski, in 1909, of "L'Edition Municipale," an exact transcription of that annotated copy of the 1588 quarto known to fame as "L'Exemplaire de Bordeaux." What the same eminent scholar gives us now is a reproduction in phototype of "L'Exemplaire." Any one, therefore, who goes to these volumes in search of literary discoveries is foredoomed to disappointment. Indeed, the same might have been said of "L'Edition Municipale"; for the "Motheau et Jouaust" edition, reprinted by MM. Flammarion in their "Bibliotheque classique," was complete enough to satisfy all but the most meticulous scholars, while for general literary purposes the edition published in 1595, three years after the author's death, by his niece, Mlle. de Gournay, is sufficient and adequate.