“In every page of Arnold the poet there is something to return upon and to admire.”

Describing poetry whose details reward repeated reading · Essay, Matthew Arnold

• Beauty
• Memory
• Poetry

“Once read as it deserves, it becomes one of the loveliest of our spiritual acquisitions.”

Suggesting that deeply received poetry becomes part of one's inner life · Essay, Heine

• Beauty
• Memory
• Poetry

“What Disraeli's people have to say is not always original nor profound, but it is crisply and happily phrased and uttered, it reads well, its impression seldom fails of permanency.”

Arguing that memorable expression can outlast novelty or profundity · Essay, Disraeli

• Art
• Memory

“I love to remember that I came into the world contemporaneously with some of his bravest work, and to reflect that even as he was the inspiration of my boyhood so is he a delight of my middle age.”

Reflecting on how a beloved writer can accompany a reader through life · Essay, Dickens

• Childhood
• Joy
• Memory

“This volume is less a book than a mosaic of scraps and shreds recovered from the shot rubbish of some fourteen years of journalism.”

Presenting a book as the recovered fragments of a working literary life · Prefatory note, Views and Reviews

• Art
• Memory