twit us with--What were his assets? If the very plenitude and variety of thy shining gifts, and the preoccupation of thy social charm, if these indispose thee to drudge it as an ‘author,’ or operate as disqualifications; will no painstaking aspirant for the literary fame essay the task of methodising thee, or some little segment of thee, into the literary form? But even thy foremost disciple, Jack Gentian, though out of humble emulation he strive to follow thy devious footing, yet thy brow is among the stars; he ventures not to lift his head to thy height. But I--ah, brimmed with thy genial flood--I, here, in the small hour, not long returned from a richer than Plato’s ‘Banquet,’ where thou didst pour from thy cornucopia, with a hand redundant as that of Millet’s seed-sower, the profusion of thy good things; I, audacious as I am, resolved upon an emprise. The Marquis, methought, though glorious, is not of the gods, the more reproach to their synod; but I will make them yield a place for him on their golden benches; I will make him an Immortal! How? Monumentalise him to the remotest posterity in a book fragrant as violets, yet lasting as the Pyramids! Yes, and as the prophets of old, announcing the mind of their deity, in some instances dramatically put on his personality, even so will I assume that of de Grandvin. How otherwise, indeed? since he it is that kindles me, inspires me, usurps me. I will snatch at those themes--New Italy and the Old Masters--wherein this very night we heard him so sportively romance. I will render the fine festivity of his tone, as well as the loftier touch; catch the rhythm of the waves of his seas of invention; swim out there; in short, I did by implication say to myself an insane thing--I will imitate the inimitable! The issue of the temerarious resolve, how humiliating! And no wonder. The inordinate aim, and the inadequate achievement! The soaring ambition of the balloon, and its abrupt drop at a fatal puncture! You who have basked in the vital beams of the Marquis, place not in contrast his own radiant aspect side by side with the dim delineation of him in the preceding sketch. And, for the attempted rendering of his thought and style in the piece to follow, take charitable example from the Persian, who in his comment upon the Icelandic version of the fervid orientalisms of Sadi and Hafiz, made humane allowance for the inherent difficulties and presumably numb fingers of the translator in penning it. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ PORTRAIT OF A GENTLEMAN