put the present into letters, or conversation, he put off the next chapter from day to day. Everything that happened, the death or marriage of an acquaintance, the discovery of a new friend, stirred his imagination; and his letters, now that his conversation can be heard no more, are indeed the fullest expression of a wisdom where there is always beauty. Yet this biographical fragment has its measure of wisdom and beauty, and I am pleased to think that when my son has reached his eighteenth birthday he will be able to say 'Though my grandfather was born a hundred years ago, and I have never seen his face, I know him from his book and think of him with affection'. W. B. Yeats. June, 1923. EARLY MEMORIES SOME CHAPTERS OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY BY JOHN BUTLER YEATS. Why I became an artist is a question which every artist must sometimes put to himself. It was my father who made me an artist, though his intention was that I should become a barrister, and I did become a barrister, but soon left it to follow my destiny and be an artist. Had I remained a barrister, in all probability both my sons would have taken to the law and would not now be one a poet and the other a painter. When I was a little child, like other children I took to drawing, and my father being very appreciative of his children admired what I drew. In those days there was a heavy tax on paper as a defence against cheap journalism, & the radical movements which it was bound to foster, and my mother, being, as are most mothers, careful of expenditure, and not very sympathetic toward my artistic strivings, was always reluctant to give me paper on which I could draw. However, my father was an Irish gentleman of the old school and not at all thrifty; from him I could always get as much paper as I wanted. At that time there were no illustrated magazines and only one illustrated paper which I saw very occasionally at a friend's house. The only newspaper which came into my father's house was the London 'Times' and it had a picture of a clock. It was I think a rough wood-block. There is no child who will not really subscribe to Aristotle's doctrine that art is imitation, and in this case the imitation was roughly rendered so that it might be described as imitation with selection. I was the eldest of the family and my brothers were much younger, for which reason my childhood was without companionship. Ah, the loneliness of such a childhood and the blessedness of it! Whether inside the house or out in the grounds I was always by myself, therefore I early learned to sustain myself by revery and dream. Years afterwards I suffered a good deal from the reproofs of my elders, for my habit of absentmindedness. Of course I was absentminded and am so still. In those childhood days I discovered the world of fantasy, and I still spend all my spare moments in that land of endearing enchantment.