There was Joseph Knight, for example. He was occupying the critic’s stall long before I ever saw the inside of a London theatre, and he continued to occupy it—with credit to himself, and to the great satisfaction of the performers—for years after my connection with the Press had ceased. He was a fine, burly, broad-shouldered man. Hailed from Yorkshire, I think, and with his bronzed face, brown beard, genial smile, and keen eye, presented more the appearance of a retired officer of the mercantile marine than of a haunter of the auditorium, and a man who usually got up in the afternoon, and came home with the milk in the morning. He had a hearty way with him, and talked in a torrent that seemed to rush over pebbles. “Willie” Wilde used to give a wonderfully realistic imitation of Jo Knight, which the subject overhearing in the foyer of the Avenue Theatre one night gravely resented. But the two men “made it up,” and Knight, indeed, became so friendly with his imitator that on one occasion he asked him to write his weekly article in the _Athenæum_ for him. Willie readily consented; and when the article in due course appeared, it turned out to be a really remarkable travesty of dear Jo’s somewhat turgid and oracular style. The essay gave great delight to those who were in the secret. But Knight never saw the joke—I question whether he ever saw any joke—and expressed to Wilde his gratitude for the admirable manner in which he had filled his place. Once and only once did I see the “Knight Owl” in a rage. Joseph was a sort of pluralist in dramatico-critical benefices, representing at one time three or four daily and weekly publications. This fact came to the knowledge of the very young critic of a very young weekly paper, who thought that he saw his way to a pungent personal paragraph. The paragraph duly made its appearance, and Knight was severely taken to task because he was in the habit of writing about the same performance in several newspapers. The young critic put it at half a dozen, which was overshooting the mark by at least two. At the very next first night of a new play, Knight and his small accuser were in their stalls before the rising of the curtain. Knight, perceiving his prey from afar off, made toward him and, assuming a very threatening attitude, said: “What you wrote about me in your infernal paper is—A LIE!” The youthful criticaster adjusted his monocle, produced a notebook and pencil, and, with the well-bred suavity of a man dying to oblige his accuser, inquired, “How many of it is a—er—lie?” and prepared to take down the correction for use in a future issue. But the torrent of Knight’s speech tumbled unintelligible over the pebbles, and he returned to his own stall snorting defiance.