ADVENTURES INCRITICISM

To

A. B. WALKLEY

My dear A. B. W.

The short papers which follow have been reprinted, with a fewalterations, from The Speaker. Possibly you knew this withoutmy telling you. Possibly, too, you have sat in a theatre beforenow and seen the curtain rise on two characters exchanginginformation which must have been their common property for years.So this dedication is partly designed to save me the trouble ofwriting a formal preface.

Pg vi

As I remember then, Adam, it was upon this fashion bequeathed usby destiny to write side by side in The Speaker every week, youabout Plays and I about Books. Three years ago you found time toarrange a few of your writings in a notable volume of PlayhouseImpressions. Some months ago I searched the files of the paperwith a similar design, and read my way through an astonishingamount of my own composition. Noble edifice of toil! It stretchedaway in imposing proportions and vanishing perspective—week uponweek—two columns to the week! The mischief was, it did notappear to lead to anything: and for the first mile or two eventhe casual graces of the colonnade were hopelessly marred throughthat besetting fault of the young journalist, who finds nosatisfaction in his business of making bricks without strawunless he can go straightway and heave them at somebody.

Still (to drop metaphor), I have chosen some papers which I hopemay be worth a second reading. They are fragmentary, by force ofthe conditions under which they were produced: but perhaps thefragments may here and there suggest the outline of a firstprinciple. And I dedicate the book to you because it would bestrange if the time during which we have appeared in print sideby side had brought no sense of comradeship. Though, in fact, welive far apart and seldom get speech together, more than one ofthese papers—ostensibly addressed to anybody whom they mightconcern—has been privately, if but sub-consciously, intendedPg viifor you.

A. T. Q. C.