o The Clown and other undergraduate
journals: also that he was a member of the Myrmidons' Club. It was
during his residence at Oxford that his famous treatise on Cosmetics
appeared in the pages of an important London Quarterly, sets of which
are still occasionally to be found in booksellers' catalogues at a high
price, though the American millionaire collector has made it one of the
rarest of finds. These were the days of his youth, the golden age of
'decadence.' For is not decadence merely a fin de siecle literary term
synonymous with the 'sowing his wild oats' of our grandfathers? a phrase
still surviving in agricultural districts, according to Mr. Andrew Lang,
Mr. Edward Clodd, and other Folk-Lorists.

Mr. Beerbohm, of course, was not the only writer of his period who
appeared as the champion of artifice. A contemporary, one Richard Le
Gallienne, an eminent Pose Fancier, has committed himself somewhere to
the statement that 'The bravest men that ever trod this planet have worn
corsets.'

But what is so far away as yester-year? In 1894, Mr. Beerbohm, in virtue
of his 'Defence of Cosmetics,' was but a pamphleteer. In 1895 he was
the famous historian, for in that year appeared the two earliest of his
profound historical studies, The History of the Year 1880, and his work
on King George the Fourth. During the growth of these masterpieces, his
was a familiar figure in the British Museum and the Record Office, and
tradition asserts that the enlargement of the latter building, which
took place some time shortly afterwards, was mainly owing to his
exertions.

Attended by his half-brother, Mr. Tree, Mrs. Tree and a numerous
theatrical suite, he sailed on the 16th of January 1895, for America,
with a view, it is said, to establishing a monarchy in that land. Mr.
Beerbohm does not appear to have succeeded in this project, though he
was interviewed in many of the newspapers of the States. He returned, re
infecta, to the land of his birth, three months later.

After that he devoted himself to the completion of his life-work, here
set forth.

The materials for this collection were drawn, with the courteous
acquiescence of various publishers, from The Pageant, The Savoy,
The Chap Book, and The Yellow Book. Internal evidence shows that Mr.
Beerbohm took fragments of his writings from Vanity (of New York) and
The Unicorn, that he might inlay them in the First Essay, of whose
scheme they are really a part. The Third Essay he re-