scarcely think it ever existed, though Wilde used to recite proposed
passages for it.

In regard to printing the lectures I have felt some diffidence: the
majority of them were delivered from notes, and the same lectures were
repeated in different towns in England and America. The reports of them
in the papers are never trustworthy; they are often grotesque travesties,
like the reports of after-dinner speeches in the London press of today. I
have included only those lectures of which I possess or could obtain
manuscript.

The aim of this edition has been completeness; and it is complete so far
as human effort can make it; but besides the lost manuscripts there must
be buried in the contemporary press many anonymous reviews which I have
failed to identify. The remaining contents of this book do not call for
further comment, other than a reminder that Wilde would hardly have
consented to their republication. But owing to the number of anonymous
works wrongly attributed to him, chiefly in America, and spurious works
published in his name, I found it necessary to violate the laws of
friendship by rejecting nothing I knew to be authentic. It will be seen
on reference to the letters on The Ethics of Journalism that Wilde's name
appearing at the end of poems and articles was not always a proof of
authenticity even in his lifetime.

Of the few letters Wilde wrote to the press, those addressed to Whistler
I have included with greater misgiving than anything else in this volume.
They do not seem to me more amusing than those to which they were the
intended rejoinders. But the dates are significant. Wilde was at one
time always accused of plagiarising his ideas and his epigrams from
Whistler, especially those with which he decorated his lectures, the