Complete Works

in a wider study of the author, and was published in the London outlookoi March 31,1906, under the title of “A Middle Class Family.” A few years before he died, Conrad rectified, as far as he could, his oversight by privately printing about fifty copies of this essay, and he would certainly have included it in any future volume of essays.
    The next piece, “A Glance at Two Books,” dealing with Galsworthy’s “The Island Pharisees” and Hudson’s “Green Mansions,” dates from even earlier and was done in 1904. Written obviously in answer to an editorial request, it was, for reasons unknown, never used, and the typescript, being found among Conrad’s papers, was first printed in T.P.’s and Cassell’s Weekly of August 1, 1925.
    A “Preface to his Shorter Tales” was written at the instigation of his American publishers to introduce “The Shorter Tales of Joseph Conrad,” and the essay, like the selection, has never appeared in England. It was one of his last completed pieces — the volume was issued after his death in 1924 — and it throws a reminiscent glance upon the ideas that animated his work and upon his writing life.
    The little not, “Cookery” charming in its playful fancy, was a send-off to his wife’s book, “A Handbook of Cookery for a Small House,” 1922. I include it here for the sake of its association and for the unique quality of its tone.
    The next two pieces, both of them letters, give glimpses of
    Conrad’s abiding interest in international questions and the affairs of Europe. He was always a student of foreign politics, a student fortified by an impressive historical sense and by a great knowledge of continental problems throughout the centuries and these two letters, with their combined eloquence and hold upon reality, throw light upon an aspect of Conrad’s mind of which few people are aware.
    The first letter, an appeal for a free Constantinople under the protection of the Powers, was published in the London Times of November 7,1912, when the Balkman States were at war with Turkey and their armies already within striking distance of her capital.
    The second letter, written evidently a few days later to an untraceable correspondent — a typescript only was found — who had criticized his printed observations, is an amplification of the previous letter.
    Finally comes ‘The Congo Diary,” a reprint of the diary kept by Conrad in the Congo in 1890, which was first published in The Blue Peter; October, 1925, and then in The Yale Review, January, 1926. This diary calls for its own introduction and a series of explanatory notes, and these will be found with it at the end of the book.
    Here, then, are the twenty pieces which compose this volume of “Last Essays.” They show as clearly as did the contents of “Notes on Life and Letters” the rich diversity of Conrad’s mind, his powers of cogent argument, of found memory, and of noble expression. His mastery over his chosen material never flagged and these essays are a last witness to his consummate gifts.
    RICHARD CURLE.
     

GEOGRAPHY AND SOME EXPLORERS
     
     
    It is safe to say that for the majority of mankind the superiority of geography over geometry lies in the appeal of its figures. It may be an effect of the incorrigible frivolity inherent in human nature, but most of us will agree that a map is more fascinating to look at than a figure in a treatise on conic sections — at any rate for the simple minds which are all the equipment of the majority of the dwellers on this earth.
    No doubt a trigonometrical survey may be a romantic undertaking, striding over deserts and leaping over valleys never before trodden by the foot of civilized man; but its accurate operations can never have for us the fascination of the first hazardous steps of a venturesome, often lonely, explorer jotting down by the light of his camp fire the thoughts, the impressions, and the toil of his day.
    For a long time yet a few suggestive words grappling with things seen will have the advantage over a long array of precise, no doubt interesting, and even profitable figures. The earth is a stage, and though it may be an advantage, even to the right comprehension of the play, to know its exact configuration, it is the drama of human endeavour that will be the thing, with a ruling passion expressed by outward action marching perhaps blindly to success of failure, which themselves are often undistinguishable from each other at first.
    Of all