SOURCE: "Mr. Robert Smythe Hichens," in Lectures to Living Authors, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1925, pp. 93-9.

In the following essay, Lacon writes in the form of a lecture to Hichens on the overall course of his career.

There was once a singular institution called, somewhat grandiloquently, the London School of Journalism. I gather from the public press that schools purporting to teach the art of writing, journalistic or other, flourish even in the present day: there may even, by now, be another bearing the same title. They arise, and fade, and rise again. And there is, I suppose, a certain part of the journalistic trade that can actually be taught—given a teacher who knows his business. At the worst the anxious beginner can be cautioned against certain offences—against the unblushing use of outworn cliches, or of the split infinitive. But why you should have frequented the school...