"I have found among my possessions none that I so much prize MACHIAVELLI.-The Prince. LONDON DUCKWORTH & CO. 1912 PUBLIC PREFACE IN the sentence from Machiavelli quoted on the title-page the phrase "great men " is used loosely, and most people use it loosely. Nature is not so lavish as all that. If she gives us one or two great men in a century let us be thankful for the one or two and, as to the rest, discriminate. To be a great orator or a great politician is not necessarily to be a great man. But the quality of greatness is there and we need not demand that it shall be so complete as to envelop the man. I have written about the men who interest me in the hope that what I say of them may interest others. All these papers are the work of the last year or two. They are, like the first series, strictly what I have called them, Memories. I have never kept a journal and seldom taken a note. If it should occur to anybody that other personages might have been included in the first series, or in the second, I may say that in earlier books of mine, and in magazines, and still more in The New York Tribune, for which most of these Memories were originally written, many other names will be found; and there may be more hereafter. The study of Mr. Whitelaw Reid was not sent to that paper, since, although on accepting the London Embassy he ceased to be its Editor, he remained chief proprietor. The chapters now republished have been revised and some have been re-written or enlarged. For my opinions and indiscretions I only am responsible. LONDON, January, 1912. G. W. S. |