XXIV 
PREFACE. 
 
 
 
PORNOGRAPHY 
 
Now to give battle one must find a disputed point, and 
struggle for its mastery.  English pudibundery being the 
main strong hold of the Puritan, I now concentrate my 
guns on that position. 
With the exception of the Chinese classics and one or 
two of the Hindu and Buddhist, all authors of antiquity are 
wholly or partially concerned to discourse frankly, joyously, 
amusingly, of the sexual act.  Of modern authors we 
observe that only the pornographic survive.  Shakespeare, 
Sterne, Swift, Rabelais, Villon, — what names have we to 
put against these ?  Milton and some lesser. 
And to-day ?  What authors of the last century do we 
find on our shelves ?  Byron, exiled, yet with wealth suffi-
cient to mock his foes ;  Shelley, expelled from Oxford, exi-
led, robbed of his children ;  Keats, bullied into consump-
tion ;  Blake, nigh starved ;  Flaubert, Baudelaire, Gautier, 
Zola, Richepin all prosecuted, suppressed ;  Verlaine, his life 
a mere holiday between spells of prison.  I cannot quote 
you the good authors, the popular authors ;  neither I nor 
any one else can remember their names. 
All this babble about indecency is the merest froth ;  as 
Vizetelly dies, broken by imprisonment for the crime of 
having translated Zola, that same Zola is being feasted at 
the 
Guildhall 
by 
the 
Lord 
Mayor 
of 
London.