We have in the English language the richest and noblest in the world, and perhaps after this war we shall hear less of the advocates of pure Saxon, an advocacy which personally I find rather like the attitude of the plain man who wants to assert himself on his first introduction to a duke.
There remains for me to apologize for the delay in the appearance of this volume. You who know how many weeks I have spent ill in bed this year will forgive me, and through you I make an apology to other readers who by their expressions of interest in the date of the second volume have encouraged me so greatly. Finally it strikes me that I have seemed above to be grumbling at criticism. This is not so. I believe there is nobody, certainly no young writer who is under such a debt of obligation as I am to the encouragement and the sympathy of his anonymous critics.
Accept this dedicatory epilogue, my dear John, as the pledge of our enduring friendship.
Yours ever,
COMPTON MACKENZIE.