Seasons, and thereby
releasing its true name (The Haven) to a friend who covets it for his own.

On the whole, however, these visitors disturb the house and the view from
my window very little. The upper halves of them, as they pass up and down
the road, appear above my garden wall much as the shadows that passed in
Plato's cave. They come, enjoy their holiday, and go, leaving the window
intent upon the harbour, its own folk and its own business.

And now for the book, which is really not a book at all, but a chapter of
one.

Last autumn I returned from a holiday to find that the publishing season
had begun. This was announced by a stack of new books, review copies and
presentation copies, awaiting me on my window-seat. I regarded it sourly.
A holiday is the most unsettling thing in the world. At the end of it I
regain the well-worn chair with a sigh of pleasure and reach for the
familiar tobacco-jar, wondering how I could have been fool enough to leave
them; yet somehow this lively sense of repurchased habit does not go far
enough and compel me to work. Being at home is a game, and so good a game
that I play at it merely, rearranging my shelves and, under pretence of
dealing with arrears of correspondence, skimming the literary papers and
book-catalogues found amid the pile of letters.

It happened that the first postal-wrapper to be broken enclosed a copy of
_The Academy_, and _The Academy_ opened with this sentence: "Since our
last issue we have received one hundred and nineteen new books and
reprints." I looked across to the pile on my window-seat and felt it to
be insignificant, though it interfered with my view of the English
Channel. One hundred and nineteen books in a single week! Yet who was I
to exclaim at their number?--I, who (it appeared) had contributed one of
them? With that I remembered something which had happened just before my
holiday, and began to reflect on it, for the first time seriously.

A publisher had asked me for a complete list of my published works, to
print it on the fly-leaf of another of them. I sat down with the best
intention and compiled it for him, and, in honest oblivion, omitted a
couple--of books, mind you--not of pamphlets, reviews, stray articles,
short stories, or any such trifles, but of books solemnly written for this
and future ages, solemnly printed, bound, and put into circulation at the
shops and libraries. (Here, for the due impressiveness of the tale,