Without dullness to contend against, beauty and wit might succumb to Capua. MORE OR LESS MODERN I MR. MAX BEERBOHM 1. THE STUDENT OF PERFECTION Mr. Max Beerbohm generally leaves us with the impression that he has written something perfect. He is, indeed, one of those writers to whom perfection is all-important, not only on account of their method, but on account of their subject matter. He is not a man engaged in a Laocoon struggle with his imagination--a man desperately at grips with a tremendous theme. He is more comparable to a laundress than to Laocoon. His work has the perfection of a starched shirt-front, which if it is not perfect is nothing. Mr. Beerbohm takes what may be called an evening-dress view of life. One would not be surprised to learn that he writes in evening dress. He has that air of good conversation without intimacy, of deliberate charm, of cool and friendly brilliance that always shows at its best above a shining and expressionless shirt-front. He belongs to the world in which it is good form to forget the passions, except for their funny side, and in which the persiflage is more indispensable than the port. Not much good literature has been written in this spirit in England. The masterpieces of persiflage in English literature are, in verse, _The Rape of the Lock_ and, in prose, _The Importance of Being Earnest_. Can anybody name three other masterpieces in the same kind? Everyone who reads _Seven Men_ can name one. It is called _Seven Men_.