d Oldershaw] came down from Oxford and pushed him."

The following letters belong to 1898, being written to Frances when
they were already engaged, but I put them here as they give some
notion of the work he did for his employer.

. . . The book I have to deal with for Unwin is an exhaustive and I
am told interesting work on "Rome and the Empire" a kind of
realistic, modern account of the life of the ancient world. I have
got to fix it up, choose illustrations, introductions, notes, etc.,
and all because I am the only person who knows a little Latin and
precious little Roman history and no more archaeology than a blind
cat. It is entertaining, and just like our firm's casual way. The
work ought to be done by an authority on Roman antiquities. If I
hadn't been there they would have given it to the office boy.

However, I shall get through it all right: the more I see of the
publishing world, the more I come to the conclusion that I know next
to nothing, but that the vast mass of literary people know less. This
is sometimes called having "a public-school education."*

[* Extract from undated letter (postmarked, Aug. 11, 1898).]

* * *

I have a lot of work to do, as Unwin has given the production of an
important book entirely into my hands, as a kind of invisible editor.
It is complimentary, but very worrying, and will mean a lot of time
at the British Museum.*

[* Extract from undated letter (postmarked, Aug. 29, 1898).]

11 Paternoster Bldgs.
(Postmark, December 1898)

. . . For fear that you should really suppose that my observations
about being busy are the subterfuges of a habitual liar, I may give
you briefly some idea of the irons at present in the fire. As far as
I can make out there are at least seven things that I have undertaken
to do and everyone of them I ought to do before any of the others.

1st. There is the book about Ancient Rome which I have to do for
T.F.U.--arrange and get illustrations etc. This all comes of showing
off. It is a story with a moral (Greedy Gilbert: or Little Boys
Should be Seen and not Heard). A short time ago I had to read a
treatise by Dean Stubbs on "The Ideal Woman of the Poets" in which
the Dean remarked that "all the women admired by Horace were
wantons." This struck me as a downright slander, slight as is my
classical knowledge, and in my report I asked loftily what De