umphs of conception and treatment, things in themselves completed, finished, and presented, they stand or fall as that; these, on the contrary, are essentially comments and enhancements of the interest of life itself. Possibly these writings, in whole or in part, are literature, but certainly, with one exception to be noted in its place, they are not Works of Art. It is far truer to call them Journalism than Art.
So the author, putting as brave a face as possible upon the matter, writes of his writings as a whole. Much of this abundant "output" of temporary interest, much that he afterwards rewrote in a more permanent form, he has excluded from this collection and thrust for ever into the waste-paper basket. Still there remains a certain amount of material, he is bound to admit, that fits very questionably into the frame of his general statement. There are things reprinted here which were done almost as casually as the faces one sketches on one's blotting-pad; things that have bubbled up from nothing in the mind, which pleased him to do and which it has pleased him to reprint.
A paragraph or so about the origins and life of the writer seems to be owing to the readers of this edition. His father, Joseph Wells, was originally a gardener, the son of Joseph Wells, the head gardener of Lord de Lisle at Penshurst. By an odd coincidence Joseph Wells, Jr., was gardener to another Joseph Wells, Joseph Wells of Redleaf, a man of considerable wealth and position, but the two families had no blood relationship whatever. The writer's mother was the daughter of George Neal, an inn-keeper at Midhurst
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