In the opinions of the Press will be found a selection from half a century of laudatory notices to which the few curious touching such matters will turn, while those who misjudged my work are duly acknowledged in this paper.  Amongst friends I would specify without invidious distinction, The Bat (September 29, ’85), who on this occasion and sundry others sturdily defended me, showing himself a bird of “light and leading.”  To the St. James’s Gazette (September 12, ’85), the Whitehall Review (September 17), the Home News (September 18), and the Nottingham Journal (September 19), I am also indebted for most appreciative and intelligent notices.  My cordial thanks are likewise due to the Editor and especially to “Our London Correspondent” of the Lincoln Gazette (October 10 and October 17, ’85, not to notice sundry minor articles):  the articles will be reprinted almost entire because they have expressed my meaning as though it came from my own mouth.  I have quoted Mr. J. Addington Symonds in extenso:  if England now possesses a writer who can deliver an authoritative judgment on literary style it is this litterateur.  Of the journals which profess letters The Academy has ever been my friend and I have still the honour of corresponding with it:  we are called “faddists” probably from our “fad” of signing our articles and thus enabling the criticised to criticise the critic.

I now turn to another of my unfriends, amongst whom is and long has been

The “Saturday Review,”

This ancient dodderer, who has seen better days, deigned favour me with six notices (January 2 and March 27, ’86; April 30, June 4, August 14, ’87, and July 21, ’88), of which No. i., dealing with my first and second volumes, is written after the facile American fashion, making the book review itself; that is, supply to the writer all the knowledge and familiarity with the subject which he parades before an incurious and easily gullible public.  This especial form of dishonesty has but lately succeeded to and ousted the classical English critique of Jeffrey, Macaulay, and the late Mr. Abraham Hayward, which was mostly a handy peg for the contents of the critic’s noddle or note book.  The Saturnine article opens characteristically.

Abroad we English have the character of being the most prudish of nations; we are celebrated as having Bowdlerized for our babes and sucklings even the immortal William Shakespeare; but we shall infallibly lose this our character should the Kamashastra Society flourish.  Captain Burton has long been known as a bold explorer; his pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina, disguised in the dress and taking on him the manners and customs of a True Believer, was a marvel of audacity; but perhaps he may be held now to have surpassed himself, for he has been bold enough to lay before his countrymen a literal and unexcised translation of The Arabian Nights.