A Commonplace Book of Thoughts, Memories, and Fancies. / 2nd ed.

I must be allowed to say a few words in explanation of the contents of this little volume, which is truly what its name sets forth—a book of common-places, and nothing more. If I have never, in any work I have ventured to place before the public, aspired to teach , (being myself a learner in all things,) at least I have hitherto done my best to deserve the indulgence I have met with; and it would pain me if it could be supposed that such indulgence had rendered me presumptuous or careless.
For many years I have been accustomed to make a memorandum of any thought which might come across me—(if pen and paper were at hand), and to mark (and remark ) any passage in a book which excited either a sympathetic or an antagonistic feeling. This collection of notes accumulated insensibly from day to day. The volumes on Shakspeare’s Women, on Sacred and Legendary Art, and various other productions, sprung from seed thus lightly and casually sown, which, I hardly know how, grew up and expanded into a regular, readable form, with a beginning, a middle, and an end. But what was to be done with the fragments which remained—without beginning, and without end—links of a hidden or a broken chain? Whether to preserve them or destroy them became a question, and one I could not answer for myself. In allowing a portion of them to go forth to the world in their original form, as unconnected fragments, I have been guided by the wishes of others, who deemed it not wholly uninteresting or profitless to trace the path, sometimes devious enough, of an “inquiring spirit,” even by the little pebbles dropped as vestiges by the way side.
A book so supremely egotistical and subjective can do good only in one way. It may, like conversation with a friend, open up sources of sympathy and reflection; excite to argument, agreement, or disagreement; and, like every spontaneous utterance of thought out of an earnest mind, suggest far higher and better thoughts than any to be found here to higher and more productive minds. If I had not the humble hope of such a possible result, instead of sending these memoranda to the printer, I should have thrown them into the fire; for I lack that creative faculty which can work up the teachings of heart-sorrow and world-experience into attractive forms of fiction or of art; and having no intention of leaving any such memorials to be published after my death, they must have gone into the fire as the only alternative left.