ther, must kill itself. At any rate he does not refer to the point.

I have been young, and now am nearly old. Silvered is the once brown
hair. Dim is the eye that on a time could decipher minion type by
moonlight. But never have I seen the publisher without a fur coat in
winter nor his seed begging bread. Nor do I expect to see such sights. Yet
I have seen an author begging bread, and instead of bread, I gave him a
railway ticket. Authors have always been in the wrong, and they always
will be: grasping, unscrupulous, mercenary creatures that they are! Some
of them haven't even the wit to keep their books from being burnt at the
stake by the executioners of the National Vigilance Association. I wonder
that publishers don't dispense with them altogether, and carry on unaided
the great tradition of English literature. Anyhow, publishers have had my
warm sympathy this Christmas-time. When I survey myself, as an example,
lapped in luxury and clinking multitudinous gold coins extorted from
publishers by my hypnotizing rascal of an agent; and when I think of the
publishers, endeavouring in their fur coats to keep warm in fireless rooms
and picking turkey limbs while filling up bankruptcy forms--I blush. Or I
should blush, were not authors notoriously incapable of that action.

1909

"ECCE HOMO"

[_7 Jan. '09_]

The people who live in the eye of the public have been asked, as usual, to
state what books during the past year have most interested them, and they
have stated. This year I think the lists are less funny than usual. But
some items give joy. Thus the Bishop of London has read Mr. A.E.W. Mason's
"The Broken Road" with interest and pleasure. Mr. Frederic Harrison, along
with two historical works, has read "Diana Mallory" with interest and
pleasure. What an unearthly light such confessions throw upon the
mentalities from which they emanate! As regards the Bishop of London I
should not have been surprised to hear that he had read "Holy Orders" with
interest and pleasure. But Mr. Frederic Harrison, one had naively
imagined, possessed some rudimentary knowledge of the art which he has
practised.

* * * * *

This confessing malady is infectious, if not contagious. I suppose that
few persons can resist the microbe. I cannot. I feel compelled to announce
to all whom it may not concern the books of the year which (at the moment
of writing) seem to have most interested me--apart from