Here is a fine illustration of Mr. Stead’s Pecksniffian peculiarities.  Captain Burton, a gentleman and a scholar whose boots Mr. Stead is not fit to black, is again hauled over the coals for the hundredth time about his new translation of the Arabian Nights, which is so “pornographic” that the price of the first volume has actually risen from a pound to twenty-five shillings.  Further down, in the very same column, the P.M.G. gloats proudly over the fact that thirty-five shillings have been given for a single copy of its own twopennyworth of smut.

The last characteristic touch which I shall take the trouble to notice is the following gem of September 16, ’87:—­

I was talking to an American novelist the other day, and he assured me that the Custom-house authorities on “the other side” seized all copies of Sir Richard Burton’s “Nights” that came into their hands, and retained them as indecent publications.  Burned them, I hope he meant, and so, I fear, will all holders of this notorious publication, for prices will advance, and Sir Richard will chuckle to think that indecency is a much better protection than international copyright.

Truly the pen is a two-edged tool, often turned by the fool against his own soul.  So an honest author “chuckles” when his subscribers have lost their copies because this will enhance the value of his book!  I ask, Can anything be better proven than the vileness of a man who is ever suspecting and looking for vileness in his fellow-men?  Again, the assertion that the Custom-house authorities in the United States had seized my copies is a Pall-Mallian fiction pure and simple, and the “Sexual Gazette” must have known this fact right well.  In consequence of a complaint lodged by the local Society for the Suppression of Vice, the officials of the Custom-house, New York, began by impounding the first volumes of the Villon Version; but presently, as a literary friend informs me (February 10, ’88), “the new translations of The Nights have been fully permitted entry at the Custom-house and are delivered on the payment of 25% duty.”  To my copies admittance was never refused.

Mr. Stead left his prison-doors noisily declaring that the rest of his life should be “devoted to Christian chivalry”—­whatever that majestic dictum may mean.  As regards his subsequent journalistic career I can observe only that it has been unfortunate as inconsequent.  He took up the defence, abusing the Home Secretary after foulest fashion of the card-blooded murderer Lipski, with the result that his protege was hanged after plenary confession and the Editor had not the manliness to apologise.  He espoused the cause of free speech in Ireland with the result that most of the orators were doomed to the infirmaries connected with the local gaols.  True to his principle made penal by the older and wiser law of libel, that is of applying individual and irresponsible judgment to, and passing final and unappealable sentence upon, the conduct of private