chase of cheap photographs (on which you may make a commission of £30 a-year), the pasting up of your scrap-book, or the contemplation of the nimbly earned guineas.

writer.

Such is the ideal raised up by an exultant democracy, and lofty as it appear it has not yet o'ershadowed the world. The man who makes "£600 a-year from it" is merely miscalling things. It is part of his essential indelicacy to use the word literature, and we wonder that he is able to spell it aright. But as though to prove that his avarice is of no account, to remind us that writing is still pursued in some places for its own sake, the works of T. E. Brown come into our hands, and we realise at once that the rag-bags are but incidents of dishonour, which shall surely pass. Now, T. E. T. E. Brown has long been known as a poet Brown, of sentiment and character; he is revealed poet and letter- in his 'Letters,' most wisely edited by Mr Irwin (London: Constable), as a prose-writer of untiring spirit, as a critic whose very waywardness is interesting. The complaint is frequently made that the art of letter-writing is dead; yet here are two volumes which are worthy to be set side by side with the classics of their kind, and not lose in the comparison. For Mr Brown had all the gifts which go to the production of perfect letters. Fancy, learning, wit, courage were his in abundant measure, and were made all the livelier by a certain petulance. Above all, his letters are the letters of a poet and a scholar. As the contemplation of nature prompted him to an eloquence almost devout, so the classics prompted him to impeccable criticism. Few writers have discoursed more wisely of Sophocles and Euripides, of Hugo and Flaubert, of Petrarch and Milton, than T. E. Brown. But his taste had a curious limitation: no sooner was modern literature his theme than he judged it from the point of view of the "sobber," which he declared

himself to be. For the moment he forgot the old inflexible standards; he felt only the sentiment which shook him to admiration; he could call 'Trilby' a piece of honeysuckle, and applaud Hall Caine, perhaps with tongue in cheek, as a kind of Shakespeare.

Yet even when you disagree with him, you feel neither displeasure nor regret. You only feel that you would have given much to have met him in argument, and to have witnessed the splendour of his paradoxes. For the truth is that, behind his scholarship, behind his wide and deep tincture of letters, there glimmers always the natural man. As his poems smell of earth and sea and sky, so his temperament sweeps even his own opinions away in a gust of passion, and he is driven to praise many foolish books which a quieter judgment would assuredly have condemned. But what is more memorable than these disagreements is, that T. E. Brown kept his valiant enthusiasms fresh unto the end. And if we judge him from his works, we may trace a clear image of his mind and character. He was a Rabelaisian in the highest sense. "There are nice Rabelaisians," he once said, "and nasty Rabelaisians, and the nasty are not Rabelaisians at all"; and while there was no suspicion of "nastiness" in him, he appreciated the full and honest flavours of life, and never looked out upon his fellows "through one hole." Withal he was, as he said himself, a true Celt, who preferred kindliness to candour, and who would have often suppressed a frank opinion rather than give pain. And this ardent poet, and yet more ardent mariner, was bound for many years of his life to uncongenial tasks. His real business was to be a schoolmaster; but a hearty dislike for his profession was the best safeguard, and the poet always rose superior to the pedagogue. Now and again he expresses the tragedy of his career in verse or prose. "O broken life" he wrote in the lines to Clifton,

"O broken life! O wretched bits of being,

The rhythmic, patched, the even and the odd !

But Bradda still has lichens worth the seeing,

And thunder in her caves-thank God! thank God!"

So when the irksome duty of Clifton appalled him, he thought of Bradda and was content.

But while he disliked the routine of teaching, scholarship never had a more loyal champion. He was against new studies, new schools. "Anything that takes off good men from the Classics," said he, "is to be deprecated;" and master of English as he was, he frankly confessed that "the twaddle of these English scholars is endless." Wherefore he supported the study of Greek with all his energy, and, when modern literature appalled him, turned in contentment to Greek or Latin. But his letters are proof enough that, despite the mill of Clifton, life was not unkind to him. The noblest pleasures were always his, the pleasures of old books. and of the open air.

When a critic omitted his name from a list of minor poets, he declared with a truthful irony: "Perhaps I am among the major." Assuredly among the major he takes his place. His works are published in the Globe edition with the masterpieces of Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Tennyson, which is as near a final consecration as a poet may expect. But in T. E. Brown there were two poets-the English and the Manxand the difference is remarkable. The Manxman is distinguished by an easy volubility, a fervid narrative, a quick sentiment. The stories in verse which make up the 'Fo'c'sle Yarns' stand by themselves in literature. Their spirit could not breathe in a well-ordered body; a familiar style is the essence of their vitality. They own no master, they will establish no school; but there is not one of them which is not vivid with character, palpitant with the right emotion. The English poems, on the other hand, afford a surprising con

trast. Such a work as the 'Epistola ad Dakyns' will endure with the language. And what astonishes us the most is the classic grace which informs the most of them. The poet's fancy is now as lively as the inspiration of the Greek Anthologists, now as delicate as the devices of our Cavaliers. But the great influence upon him is Milton, whose harmonies are heard in many a stately line. Thus it is our good fortune to study this artist in prose and verse at a time when ignorance and avarice are doing their worst for literature, when few men are secure from the insolence of "bookmen or from the squalor of prying paragraphs. Yet, so long as masterpieces like these encourage us, may we not look upon the "magazines" with indifference, and smile at the smug content of the well-rewarded democrat?

Campfollowers of falsebood.

DECEMBER.

THE war is drawing to the close of its first stage, and the camp-followers of falsehood and slander enjoy their triumph. Our War Office is assailed, as though its chiefs had ruined the empire to fill their own pockets. Our generals are criticised, as though they were actors who had failed to satisfy the audience of a first night. And now that we have won the battle, changing as we won it the ancient art of war, there is one question that may lawfully be asked,-Shall we again gladly suffer the insolent condemnation of the inexpert? Shall we again show the first vulgar urchin that presents himself into the stalls, and let him frame whatever opinion his ignorance forces upon him of a performance which means life or death to thousands? We believe not, and we congratulate ourselves that, after the experience of South Africa, journalists and other busybodies will be excluded from our camps until the end of time.

For the adverse opinion of the Continent we care not a rap. The joy of France and of Russia at a supposed mishap is a tribute not only to our courage but to their cowardice. They rejoiced every time that their journals announced the fall of Ladysmith, because they hoped that the foe they dared not face had been vanquished by another. Again, the slanderous obscenities that have been circulated abroad merely betray a vice of manners, which "the most polite people" in Europe may explain as it chooses. Lord Rosebery, in a moment of Radical enthusiasm, once declared that there