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Book, page 11 / 392 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 old, cares to have it made quite clear that a door at which he wishes to enter is permanently shut against him. However, I was not likely to be depressed for long at so small a matter as this; I was much too full of enjoyment in my new London life. The wide world affords nothing to equal one's first year in London--at least, that was my feeling. My first year at Oxford had been delightful, as were also the three following, but there was to me something in the throb of the great pulse of London which, as a stimulant, nay, an
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