By Max Beerbohm

By Max Beerbohm

TO MY WIFE

I offer here some of the essays that I have written in the course of the past ten years. While I was collecting them and (quite patiently) reading them again, I found that a few of them were in direct reference to the moments at which they were severally composed. It was clear that these must have their dates affixed to them. And for sake of uniformity I have dated all the others, and, doing so, have thought I need not exclude all such topical remarks as in them too were uttered, nor throw into a past tense such of those remarks as I have retained. Perhaps a book of essays ought to seem as if it had been written a few days before publication. On the other hand—but this is a Note, not a Preface. M.B. Rapallo, 1920.

CONTENTS

A RELIC 1918.

‘HOW SHALL I WORD IT?’ 1910.

MOBLED KING 1911.

KOLNIYATSCH 1913.

No. 2. THE PINES, 1914

A LETTER THAT WAS NOT WRITTEN 1914.

BOOKS WITHIN BOOKS 1914.

THE GOLDEN DRUGGET 1918.

HOSTS AND GUESTS 1918.

A POINT TO BE REMEMBERED BY VERY EMINENT MEN 1918.

SERVANTS 1918.

GOING OUT FOR A WALK 1918.

QUIA IMPERFECTUM 1918.

SOMETHING DEFEASIBLE July, 1919.

‘A CLERGYMAN’ 1918.

THE CRIME 1920.

IN HOMES UNBLEST 1919.

WILLIAM AND MARY 1920.

ON SPEAKING FRENCH 1919.

LAUGHTER, 1920.