The Project Gutenberg eBook, Adventures in Criticism, by Sir Arthur Thomas
Quiller-Couch

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Title: Adventures in Criticism

Author: Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

Release Date: January 3, 2006 [eBook #17452]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ADVENTURES IN CRITICISM***

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Transcriber's Note: Brief Greek phrases appear in the original
text in three places. They have been
transliterated and placed between +marks+.

ADVENTURES IN CRITICISM

by

A. T. QUILLER-COUCH

New York
Charles Scribner's Sons
Copyright, 1896
Trow Directory Printing and Bookbinding Company
New York

To

A.B. WALKLEY

MY DEAR A.B.W.

The short papers which follow have been reprinted, with a few
alterations, from _The Speaker_. Possibly you knew this without
my telling you. Possibly, too, you have sat in a theatre before
now and seen the curtain rise on two characters exchanging
information which must have been their common property for years.
So this dedication is partly designed to save me the trouble of
writing a formal preface.

As I remember then, Adam, it was upon this fashion bequeathed us
by destiny to write side by side in _The Speaker_ every week, you
about Plays and I about Books. Three years ago you found time to
arrange a few of your writings in a notable volume of _Playhouse
Impressions_. Some months ago I searched the files of the paper
with a similar design, and read my way through an astonishing
amount of my own composition. Noble edifice of toil! It stretched
away in imposing proportions and vanishing perspective--week upon
week--two columns to the week! The mischief was, it did not
appear to lead to anything: and for the first mile or two even
the casual graces of the colonnade were hopelessly marred through
that besetting fault of the young journalist, who finds no
satisfac