Like two other great essayists, Addison and Steele, Mr. Beerbohm was educated at Charterhouse, and, like the latter, at Merton College, Oxford. At Charterhouse he is still remembered for his Latin verses, and for the superb gallery of portraits of the masters that he completed during his five years' sojourn there. There are still extant a few copies of his satire, in Latin elegiacs, called Beccerius, privately printed at the suggestion of Mr. A. H. Tod, his form-master. The writer has said 'Let it lie,' however, and in such a matter the author's wish should surely be regarded. I have myself been unable to obtain a sight of a copy, but a more fortunate friend has furnished me with a careful description of the opusculum, which I print in its place in the bibliography. He matriculated at Merton in 1890, and immediately applied himself to the task he had set before him, namely, a gallery of portraits of the Dons. I am aware that he contributed to The Clown and other undergraduate journals: also that he was a member of the Myrmidons' Club. It was during his residence at Oxford that his famous treatise on Cosmetics appeared in the pages of an important London Quarterly, sets of which are still occasionally to be found in booksellers' catalogues at a high price, though the American millionaire collector has made it one of the rarest of finds. These were the days of his youth, the golden age of 'decadence.' For is not decadence merely a fin de siècle literary term synonymous with the 'sowing his wild oats' of our grandfathers? a phrase still surviving in agricultural districts, according to Mr. Andrew Lang, Mr. Edward Clodd, and other Folk-Lorists. Mr. Beerbohm, of course, was not the only writer of his period who appeared as the champion of artifice. A contemporary, one Richard Le Gallienne, an eminent Pose Fancier, has committed himself somewhere to the statement that 'The bravest men that ever trod this planet have worn corsets.' But what is so far away as yester-year? In 1894, Mr. Beerbohm, in virtue of his 'Defence of Cosmetics,' was but a pamphleteer. In 1895 he was the famous historian, for in that year appeared the two earliest of his profound historical studies, The History of the Year 1880, and his work on King George the Fourth. During the growth of these masterpieces, his was a familiar figure in the British Museum and the Record Office, and tradition asserts that the enlargement of the latter building, which took place some time shortly afterwards, was mainly owing to his exertions. Attended by his half-brother, Mr. Tree, Mrs. Tree and a numerous theatrical suite, he sailed on the 16th of January 1895, for America, with a view, it is said, to establishing a monarchy in that land. Mr. Beerbohm does not appear to have succeeded in this project, though he was interviewed in many of the newspapers of the States. He returned, re infecta, to the land of his birth, three months later.