THE BOOK: AN APOLOGY 5 



colouring and delightful in their ways as those two, 

 and some even more so. 



Much, too, might be said on the subject of many 

 books being written about birds. They are not 

 necessarily repetitions. When a writer of fact or 

 fiction puts his friends and acquaintances in a book, 

 as a rule it makes a difference, a decline, in the degree 

 of cordiality in their relations. That is only, of 

 course, when the reader recognises himself in the 

 portrait. He may not do so, portraits not always 

 being "pure realism," as Mr. Stanhope Forbes says 

 they are. But whether the reader recognises his own 

 picture or not, the writer himself experiences a change 

 of feeling towards his subject. It is, to put it brutally, 

 similar to that of the boy towards the sucked orange. 

 There is nothing more to be got out of it. It need 

 not be supposed for a moment that the fictionist is 

 friendly towards or interested in his fellow-creatures 

 for the sake of what he can get out of them — that, 

 like the portrait-painter, he is on the look-out for a 

 subject. He has no such unworthy motive, and the 

 change in his feeling comes about in another way. 

 Having built up his picture he looks on it and finds 

 it an improvement, and infinitely more interesting 

 than the original, and the old feeling inevitably 

 changes — it is transferred from the man to the picture. 

 These changes in feeling never occur in the case of 

 the feathered friends we have made, and find pleasure 

 in portraying. We may put them again and again 

 in books without experiencing any diminution in 

 our feelings towards them. On the contrary, after 



