I wish that I could write frankly and openly of the disturbance and alarm the book occasioned. If I were publishing this essay in the first instance in America I should certainly do so. However, as it will appear in England and afterwards in the Land of Freedom of Speech, this joy is not permitted to me. As Mr. H. G. Wells would say, “Figure that the bomb fell upon the green of All Souls’ while the clock in the gateway of Christ Church was in the act of striking twelve.” The rush and hurry, the frightened consultations, the squeaks of those who realized that Nemesis was at hand at last and was beating at the door, were, I can assure the public that will read this paper, comparable to nothing so much as the occasion when the feet of the ferret are heard drumming down the hollow burrows of the warren, while the rabbits know the day of irresponsible frolic is over and that they must die in the dark or in the open, but must die. The Historicides of Oxford have always feared an extended public and distrusted a name that has been made without their connivance, and which is beyond their reach. I find it difficult to suppose that those who do not realize the incredible narrowness and stupidity of a certain type of history don, will believe the anecdote I am about to tell. Nevertheless, it is true. A pedant, whose name I will not give, was recently heard to refer to Mr. Thomas Hardy in these words, “Hardy? Hardy? Oh, do you mean the little novelist man?” Let me put it before you quite plainly and in antithesis. Hardly anything could better illustrate the appalling mental position of the _camarilla_ that has got to go. Here is a priggish person, whom no one has ever heard of outside Oxford, piping out his contempt for a man who is generally recognized as one of the most distinguished novelists and one of the chief artists alive in our time.