cut-and-dry, dull, swaggering, obtrusive, and infantile art, I seem
to have learned the very spirit of my life's enjoyment; met there
the shadows of the characters I was to read about and love in a
late future; got the romance of DER FREISCHUTZ long ere I was to
hear of Weber or the mighty Formes; acquired a gallery of scenes
and characters with which, in the silent theatre of the brain, I
might enact all novels and romances; and took from these rude cuts
an enduring and transforming pleasure. Reader - and yourself?

A word of moral: it appears that B. Pollock, late J. Redington, No.
73 Hoxton Street, not only publishes twenty-three of these old
stage favourites, but owns the necessary plates and displays a
modest readiness to issue other thirty-three. If you love art,
folly, or the bright eyes of children, speed to Pollock's, or to
Clarke's of Garrick Street. In Pollock's list of publicanda I
perceive a pair of my ancient aspirations: WRECK ASHORE and
SIXTEEN-STRING JACK; and I cherish the belief that when these shall
see once more the light of day, B. Pollock will remember this
apologist. But, indeed, I have a dream at times that is not all a
dream. I seem to myself to wander in a ghostly street - E. W., I
think, the postal district - close below the fool's-cap of St.
Paul's, and yet within easy hearing of the echo of the Abbey
bridge. There in a dim shop, low in the roof and smelling strong
of glue and footlights, I find myself in quaking treaty with great
Skelt himself, the aboriginal all dusty from the tomb. I buy, with
what a choking heart - I buy them all, all but the pantomimes; I
pay my mental money, and go forth; and lo! the packets are dust.