"What did the [British Library] reading-room look like [in 1997]? ... What did the people there look like?" ... "They all looked very like one another ... All dressed in Jaeger?" "Yes. Greyish-yellowish stuff." "A sort of uniform? With a number on a large disc of metal sewn on to the left sleeve?" It was even so.

When a book about the literature of the 1890s was given by Mr Holbrook Jackson to the world, I looked eagerly in the index for SOAMES, ENOCH. I had feared he would not be there. He was not there. But everybody else was.... the omission found by me was an all the deadlier record of poor Soames' failure to impress himself on the decade.

"If I could be projected into the future, into that reading-room, just for this one afternoon! I'd sell myself body and soul to the devil for that! Think of the pages and pages in the catalogue: "SOAMES, ENOCH" endlessly - endless editions, commentaries, prologomena, biographies" ...