The contents of this book have been chosen from a series of weekly
articles which enlivened the _New Age_ during the years 1908, 1909, 1910,
and 1911, under the pseudonym "Jacob Tonson." The man responsible for the
republication is the dedicatee, who, having mysteriously demanded from me
back numbers of the _New Age_, sat in my house one Sunday afternoon and in
four hours read through the entire series. He then announced that he had
made a judicious selection, and that the selection must positively be
issued in volume form. Mr. Frank Swinnerton approved the selection and
added to it slightly. In my turn I suggested a few more additions. The
total amounts to one-third of the original matter. Beyond correcting
misprints, softening the crudity of several epithets, and censoring lines
here and there which might give offence without helping the sacred cause,
I have not altered the articles. They appear as they were journalistically
written in Paris, London, Switzerland, and the Forest of Fontainebleau.
In particular I have left the critical judgments alone, for the good
reason that I stand by nearly all of them, though perhaps with a less
challenging vivacity, to this day.