Excerpt from The History of David Grieve
Dear Mr. Smith,
A few days ago there came into my head the idea of writing you - my friend and publisher - an "open letter" which might serve, if you thought well, as a little preface to the sixth and popular edition of "The History of David Grieve;" and I was turning the notion over in my mind when I fell upon a passage in M. Renan"s last volume of "Souvenirs," which he has called "Feuilles Detachees." He is describing his relations with the "Journal des Debats" and with M. Silvestre de Sacy, the editor of that well-known newspaper when the young ex-seminarist and future author of the "Vie de Jesus" first joined its staff. "I owe to M. de Sacy," says M. Renan, "some of the moral rules that I have always followed. I owe to him in particular the habit of never replying to newspaper attacks even when they contain the greatest enormities. When I submitted to him different cases of possible exceptions, his answer was invariable: "Jamais, jamais, jamais!" I believe that on this point, as on so many others, I have conscientiously followed the counsels of my old master. Du haut du del M. de Sacy sera content de moi."
"Jamais!"
It is true that, a little further on, M. Renan, with his usual hatred of the absolute, begins to qualify and ponder a little - falls wondering, after all, whether "nowadays M. de Sacy would not change his mind." But all the same, that "Jamais!" of M. de Sacy lingered in my ear, and stood in the way of my own small project. "No, no!" I have said to myself; "M. Renan"s old friend was a thousand times right.
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