one is persuaded that they are.

I have said that the editor of the _Athenaeum_, in my time, was a
charming and accomplished writer; he is also my very good friend and too
generous critic, and I should be a wretch if I did not love him. But on
the evening when a weekly paper goes to press, when the pages are
pouring in, and some one, as likely as not, is waiting at the Cafe
Royal, even the most cultivated and considerate of editors will be an
editor. Wherefore I must now plague you and my readers with a word or
two in explanation of my method of correction and revision. Re-reading
these articles--some of which were written nine or ten years ago--I come
on such phrases as "this is a notable achievement," "his equipment is
not really strong," and I wonder, of course, what the devil I did say.
No doubt it was something definite and particular, for in those days I
was a most conscientious writer; but what subtle limitation, what
delicately suggested reference, what finely qualifying phrase, what
treasure of my critical nonage lies buried beneath this "getting out"
formula I cannot now remember. I read the article again and again but I
want the courage and energy to read again the book about which it was
written. And, if I did, should I recapture precisely what I thought or
felt and tried, by means of that lost clause or sentence, not to leave
quite unexpressed? The idea is gone, and with it, no doubt, the
complete significance of the article. I have botched and cobbled, but at
best I have but patched a rent. I hope, however, that I have not spared
many of those trusty veterans who, occasionally even in our best weekly
and regularly in our morning and evening papers, are expected to do duty
for sense.

Wherever the blue pencil or standardized phrase has left too deep a
wound or gross a blemish I have had to rewrite. And, as I have rarely
succeeded in recovering the original idea, I have had to borrow from my
later thought. Of such patching I have been as thrifty as possible:
also, I have not attempted to square the opinions and sentiments of
early days with my later pronouncements, so, I make no doubt, some very
clever readers will have the pleasure of catching me in inconsistency.
If they are really clever they will catch me in worse things than that,
in puerility for instance, and affectation, to say nothing of blasphemy
and sedition. As for consistency, I seem consistently to have cared much
for four things--Art, Truth,