Naturally, Joyce became much in demand as a speaker before purely Catholic audiences. And naturally before Roman Catholic schools, colleges, universities and societies he loosed the spirit of his own fervent Catholicism. Perhaps it will occur to some readers of this volume who may not be Catholics that such lectures as "Lionel Johnson, Ernest Dawson, Aubrey Beardsley" and "Swinburne and Francis Thompson" are more in the nature of briefs for the Catholic Faith than they are of the character of disinterested literary criticism. I do not think it would have worried Joyce to have been told so. He was in such lectures talking what was to him far more than literature. In a letter of his before me, written by hand, he says, "There are in the universe only two ecstasies. One is receiving Holy Communion." The other, he means, is his love for his wife. "Poetry," he continues, "is not an ecstasy, but it is a delight, a shadow and an echo of the two ecstasies. It certainly is a delight to read and to make." What, to his mind, was the use of writers, anyway? In the lecture "Philosophical Tendencies in English Literature" he tells very definitely his conviction as to this: So writers may fulfill the purpose for which they were made by writing--may know God better by writing about Him, increase their love of Him by expressing it in beautiful words, serve Him in this world by means of their best talent, and because of this service and His mercy be happy with Him forever in Heaven. III Numerous letters written by Joyce to many of his friends, and kindly loaned by their owners to the publishers, were received too late for inclusion in the two-volume set of his poems, essays and letters. These letters continue in greater detail, and give the emphasis of cumulative effect, to the portrait of a beautiful and a joyous young manhood revealed by the letters which were printed. A man has only one life to live in this world, but (if he is anything like Kilmer) many friends. And so it is that several groups of letters from his hand are more than apt to tell, with some variations in expression, very much the same story. Two stout volumes of collected letters sometimes are compiled as an appropriate part of the literary remains of a notable life. Anything approaching such a bulk of preserved correspondence, however, can only be in order when that life has reflected something like three or four times the number of working years that were Kilmer's. Some few points I find in the unpublished letters which may be new to many of Joyce's readers. In one place he says, referring to the approaching publication of the volume which was issued as "Trees and Other Poems," "My Book is to appear next October. It is called 'The Twelve-forty-five and Other Poems.'" A little later he writes: