assuredly I did; but it was a detached pleasure. I felt like one who looked upon his own posthumous works. My feelings were unconditioned by personal ties to the book. It was like meeting yourself unrecognised in a mirror-a sub-liminal adventure-like that of Rudyard Kipling's soldier: "I heard a beggar squeal— and it was me." I read the lettering on the "jacket " of the book as one who reads his own epitaph. I read the pleasantly appreciative words over twice before getting contact with the essential person about whom they were written :—

The essays in this volume have already won for themselves in the pages of To-DAY a large number of friends who have enjoyed their keen criticisms of books and personalities, their frank and lucid statement of opinion, and above all their unfailing and infectious good humour. The author prefers to be known by his pen-name, Bernard Lintot, and although many attempts have been made to identify this writer, all guesses up to now have been misleading. The anonymity of Bernard Lintot is likely to be maintained.

And even then the objectivity of End Papers was maintained. It was just a book of essays in dignified black linen binding, with the title and name of the author stamped in gold. A companionable book, such as I like myself, clearly printed, without adventitious ornamentation or fuss of pictures, the sort of book people who liked books would pick up and read—which I proceeded to do. At this point I realised my paternity in End Papers.

OW I suppose I am not the first author who has opened his own book, his first book, with curiosity and interest, and probably with pleasure and fear jostling one another, and fear getting the better of it. For once a thing gets put into a book it will go on living for a long time, and realising that this printed child of mine had come into the world by my sanction, I had a horrible fear that it might be deformed, a monster or an imbecile, or at best something less than it ought to have been or

ness.

might have been had I devoted more time, energy and thought to its composition. Thus fearfully I dipped into my first book. And once more I experienced an abstract emotion as of one who reads his own book as though it were just a book and not his. I opened the volume at the paper called "Irrational-a Sermon," and found myself following my own sophisticated exposition of the dietetic value of literature with a certain duality of consciousThe whimsical arguments of that paper took upon themselves a new quality which no other reader save the author of them could appreciate. I suddenly remembered how that quaint emphasis on books as food came about; this was recalled to memory by the date at the end of the essay. It was written during the darkest part of the beginning of 1918-winter-dark and war-dark combined, when our interest in food increased as our chances of getting as much as we needed decreased. The essay is something more than a whimsical sophistry; it is the relic of a war mood. And to me it is more than that, for it was written on the evening of the 28th January, 1918, for the February TO-DAY. Just as I sat down to write an air raid began, and I went on writing to the accompaniment of the sound of bursting bombs and the barrage fire of the anti-aircraft guns. It was writing under difficulties, and that probably explains why an essay on so delightful a subject is not very much better than it is.

Sand

O I went on reading and commentating and remembering, and in short enjoying myself more successfully than it is proper to admit-for every author, even those who are most skilled in the gentle art of log-rolling, would admit the impropriety of literary self-praise. I, on the contrary, do not admit the impropriety. The best authors have done it—which I am aware is no excuse; I am citing precedents, not upholding what may be regrettable. I don't say that it is regrettable. Shakespeare and Dickens and Bernard Shaw have all bragged about their

own work, and so have many more lesser authors. But I am not going to join them. I have not the inclination and, possibly also, not the courage. It requires more courage to praise yourself than to praise others even when you don't deserve it. All I have been trying to do in this paper is to express somewhat of an author's feelings on publishing a book and reading it. "Reading," says the author of End Papers, "Reading is almost as much an art as writing." I rather think there is more in that statement than probably even its ingenious author imagined. Some books, he proceeds to remind us, send us to sleep, others keep us awake, some make us forget, others give us knowledge; but, and he has saved the good wine till last, no books" do more for you than reveal you to yourself as in a magic glass." End Papers must have done something like that for me. It showed me a portrait of myself, and if at first I did not see the likeness the fault was not that of the portrait further acquaintance convinces me that it is me all right.

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