There was, indeed, no account of him in print. It was not till 1887 that I found a brief but masterly memoir in ‘Celebrities of the Century.’ The article concluded with the statement that in the ‘Athenæum’ and in the Ninth Edition of the ‘Encyclopædia Britannica’ Mr. Watts-Dunton had ‘founded a school of criticism which discarded conventional authority, and sought to test all literary effects by the light of first principles merely.’ These words encouraged me, for they told me that as a boy I had not been wrong in thinking that I had discovered a master and a guide in literature. Then came the memoir of Philip Bourke Marston by the American poetess, Louise Chandler Moulton, in which she described Mr. Watts-Dunton as ‘a poet whose noble work won for him the intimate friendship of Rossetti and Browning and Lord Tennyson, and was the first link in that chain of more than brotherly love which binds him to Swinburne, his housemate at present and for many years past.’ I also came across Clarence Stedman’s remarks upon the opening of ‘The Coming of Love,’ ‘Mother Carey’s Chicken,’ first printed in the ‘Athenæum.’ He was enthusiastic about the poet’s perception of ‘Nature’s grander aspects,’ and spoke of his poetry as being ‘quite independent of any bias derived from the eminent poets with whom his life has been closely associated.’ When afterwards I made his acquaintance, our intercourse led to the formation of a friendship which has deepened my gratitude for the spiritual and intellectual guidance I have found in his writings for nearly twenty years. Owing to the popularity of ‘The Coming of Love’ and of ‘Aylwin’—which the late Lord Acton, in ‘The Annals of Politics and Culture,’ placed at the head of the three most important books published in 1898—Mr. Watts-Dunton’s name is now familiar to every fairly educated person. About few men living is there so much literary curiosity; and this again is a reason for writing a book about him.