Earthwork out of Tuscany

Earthwork out of Tuscany

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Title: Earthwork Out Of Tuscany
Author: Maurice Hewlett
Release Date: September, 2005 [EBook #8858] [This file was first
posted on August 14, 2003]
Edition: 10

Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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EARTHWORK OUT OF TUSCANY ***

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EARTHWORK OUT OF TUSCANY
Being Impressions and Translations of Maurice Hewlett

"For as it is hurtful to drink wine or water alone; and as wine mingled
with water is pleasant and delighteth the taste: even so speech, finely
framed, delighteth the ears of them that read the story."--3
MACCABEES xv. 39.
TO
MY FATHER
THIS LITTLE BOOK
NOT AS BEING WORTHY BUT AS ALL I HAVE
IS DEDICATED
I cannot add one tendril to your bays, Worn quietly where who love
you sing your praise; But I may stand Among the household throng
with lifted hand, Upholding for sweet honour of the land Your crown
of days.

PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION
I cannot be for ever explaining what I intended when I wrote this book.
Upon this, its third appearance, even though it is to rank in that good
company which wears the crimson of Eversley, it must take its chance,
undefended by its conscious parent. He feels, indeed, with all the
anxieties, something of the pride of the hen, who conducts her brood of
ducklings to the water, sees them embark upon the flood, and must
leave them to their buoyant performances, dreadful, but aware also that
they are doing a finer thing than her own merits could have hoped to
win them. So it is here. I did not at the outset expect a third edition in
any livery; I may still fear a wreck for this cockboat of my early
invention; but I hope I am too respectful of myself to try throwing oil
upon the waters.
I leave the former prefaces as they stand. I felt them when I made them,
and feel them still; but I shall make no more. If Earthwork has the
confidence, at this time of day, to carry a red coat, it shall carry it alone.
LONDON, 1901.
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
Mr. Critics--to whom, kind or unkind, I confess obligations--and the
Public between them have produced, it appears, some sort of demand
for this Second Edition. While I do not think it either polite or politic to
enquire too deeply into reasons, I am not the man to disoblige them. It
is sufficient for me that in a world indifferent well peopled five
hundred souls have bought or acquired my book, and that other
hundreds have signified their desire to do likewise. Nevertheless--the
vanity of authors being notoriously hard-rooted--I must own to my
mortification in the discovery that not more than two in every hundred
who have read me have known what I was at. I have been told it is a
good average, but, with deference, I don't think so. No man has any
right to take beautiful and simple things out of their places, wrap them
up in a tissue of his own conceits, and hand them about the universe for
gods and men to wonder upon. If he must convey simple things let him
convey them simply. If I, for instance, must steal a loaf of bread, would

it not be better to walk out of the shop with it under my coat than to call
for it in a hansom and hoodwink the baker with a forged cheque on
Coutts's bank? Surely. If, then, I go to Italy, and convey the
hawthor-scent of Della Robbia, the straining of Botticelli to express the
ineffable, the mellow autumn tones of the life of Florence; if I do this,
and make a parade of my magnanimity in permitting the household to
divide the spoil, how on earth