articles to The Saturday, got them accepted, and later, to
my great delight, received novels and poems for review.
I also wrote occasionally in The Pall Mall, in the days in
which it was edited by Lord Morley, and in The Academy.
It was not until I settled down in London to read for the
Bar, a year and a half after I had left Oxford, that I made
any attempt to write for The Spectator. In the last few
days of 1885 I got my father to give me a formal introduc-
tion to the editors, and went to see them in Wellington
Street. They told me, as in my turn I have had to tell so
many would-be reviewers, what no doubt was perfectly
true, namely that they had already got more outside
reviewers than they could possibly find work for, and that
they were sorry to say I must not count upon their being
able to give me books. All the same, they would like me to
take away a couple of volumes to notice, -- making it clear,
however, that they did this out of friendship for my father.

I was given my choice of books, and the two I chose
were a new edition of Gulliver's Travels, well illustrated in
colour by a French artist, and, if I remember rightly, the
Memoirs of Henry Greville, the brother of the great Gre-
ville. I will not say that I departed from the old Spectator
offices at I Wellington Street -- a building destined to play
so great a part in my life -- in dudgeon or even in dis-
appointment. I had not expected very much. Still, no
man, young or old, cares to have it made quite clear that a
door at which he wishes to enter is permanently shut
against him.

However, I was not likely to be depressed for long at so
small a matter as this; I was much too full of enjoyment in
my new London life. The wide world affords nothing to
equal one's first year in London -- at least, that was my
feeling. My first year at Oxford had been delightful, as
were also the three following, but there was to me some-

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