[C] When this article was first published in Household Words, a son of Mr. Elliston wrote to the conductor to protest against the epithets which I had attached to his father's name. In the present reprint I have removed the epithets; not because I think them undeserved, but because they merely represented my own angry sense of Mr. Elliston's treatment of Jerrold—a sense which I have no wish needlessly to gratify at the expense of a son's regard for his father's memory. But the facts of the case as they were originally related, and as I heard them from Jerrold himself, remain untouched—exactly as my own opinion of Mr. Elliston's conduct remains to this day unaltered. If the "impartial" reader wishes to have more facts to decide on than those given in the text, he is referred to Raymond's Life of Elliston—in which work he will find the clear profits put into the manager's pocket by Black-Eyed Susan, estimated at one hundred and fifty pounds a week.
[D] This paper, and the paper on Art entitled 'To Think, or Be Thought For,' which immediately follows it, provoked, at the time of their first appearance, some remonstrance both of the public and the private sort. I was blamed—so far as I could understand the objections—for letting out the truth about the Drama, and for speaking my mind (instead of keeping it to myself, as other people did) on the subject of the Old Masters. Finding, however, that my positions remained practically unrefuted, and that my views were largely shared by readers with no professional interest in theatres, and no vested critical rights in old pictures—and knowing, besides, that I had not written without some previous inquiry and consideration—I held steadily to my own convictions; and I hold to them still. These articles are now reprinted (as they were originally produced) to serve two objects which I persist in thinking of some importance:—Freedom of inquiry into the debased condition of the English Theatre; and freedom of thought on the subject of the Fine Arts.
[E] This time-table is no invention of mine. It is accurately copied from an "original document" sent to me by the victim of a monthly nurse.