LESLIE STEPHEN'S ESSAYS SIR,—In his review of Men, Boas and
Mountains, essays by Leslie Stephen, Mr. John Bayley seems rather disappointed that the volume does not con- tain Stephen's 'best work,' though he concedes that 'it is a good representative batch. By 'best' I assume that he is thinking of the essays from which he quotes and upon which he bases most of his review. Had he read my introduction, he might have dis- covered why (with one exception) these are missing: the volume consists entirely of essays that have never been available in book form. Moreover, most of them were selected, not, because they are 'repre- , sentativc,' but because they illustrate characteristics of Stephen's work that have usually been overlooked. I regret that your readers have been given so misleading a description of the book.—Yours faith- fully,
S. 0. A. ULLMAN Department of English, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis 14, Minnesota [John Bayley writes: 'I apologise to Mr. Ullman if I. appeared to overlook the critical method of his selection. A selection of Stephen's essays seemed to me to call for some general .remarks on Stephen, which were what I had in mind to give.'—Editor, Spectator.]
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