Painful as it is in any case for a lecturer to address an audience, the most painful part is listening while the Chairman describes the qualifications or want of qualifications of the Lecturer. I do not wish to indulge more than is necessary in irrelevant autobiography; but I want to tell you briefly what I consider to be my own qualifications for daring to stand up and address you to-day. My strongest credentials, I believe, are these : Some years ago a certain opera of which I had perpetrated an English version of the libretto was being performed in the provinces, and I saw the Press notices of the performance : and being myself a journalist naturally I attach the greatest importance to what a free and enlightened Press has to say. I read on one occasion that the gentleman who took the leading part in that Opera, not being an Englishman, had entirely misread one of my sentences; in fact had spoken what was absolute rubbish. In a certain provincial journal this passage was quoted at length, and the writer said, “This will serve as a good example of the translation of this libretto as a whole.”