My father, a friend of both the joint editors, Mr. Hutton and Mr.
Townsend, was a frequent contributor to the paper. In a sense,
therefore, I was brought up in a "Spectator" atmosphere. Indeed, the
first contributions ever made by me to the press were two sonnets which
appeared in its pages, one in the year 1875 and the other in 1876. I did
not, however, begin serious journalistic work in _The Spectator_,
but, curiously enough, in its rival, _The Saturday Review_. While I
was at Oxford I sent several middle articles to _The Saturday_, got
them accepted, and later, to my great delight, received novels and poems
for review. I also wrote occasionally in _The Pall Mall_, in the
days in which it was edited by Lord Morley, and in _The Academy_.
It was not until I settled down in London to read for the Bar, a year
and a half after I had left Oxford, that I made any attempt to write for
_The Spectator_. In the last few days of 1885 I got my father to
give me a formal introduction to the editors, and went to see them in
Wellington Street. They told me, as in my turn I have had to tell so
many would-be reviewers, what no doubt was perfectly true, namely that
they had already got more outside reviewers than they could possibly
find work for, and that they were sorry to say I must not count upon
their being able to give me books. All the same, they would like me to
take away a couple of volumes to notice,--making it clear, however, that
they did this out of friendship for my father.

I was given my choice of books, and the two I chose were a new edition
of _Gulliver's Travels_, well illustrated in colour by a French
artist, and, if I remember rightly, the _Memoirs of Henry
Greville_, the brother of the great Greville. I will not say that I
departed from the old _Spectator_ offices at 1 Wellington Street--a
building destined to play so great a part in my life--in dudgeon or even
in disappointment. I had not expected very much. Still, no man, young or