Excerpt from A Book of Preferences in LiteratureTitle A Book of Preferences in Literature. The essays included here deal with subjects which, for one reason or another, are dear to the mind of their writer, and represent a personal choice amongst many valued books. Exclusion from these pages does not necessarily mean that such absent authors are less congenial to his taste. It implies simply that M. Anatole France and Mr. Rudyard Kipling amongst novelists, Walter Pater amongst essayists, and Christina Rossetti, Mr. W. B. Yeats, Heredia, and Francis Thompson amongst poets, are peculiarly grateful to his temperament and thought. The writers named, however eminent, are not perhaps of the supremest genius. It matters little. In literature, as in prayer, the devotion at times will be addressed to the saint rather than to the Deity, and yet the homage.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.