is one of those stories in which the reader is worked up to a moment of intense horror only to be let down with mockery by the narrator. Everything in it is perfectly done--the grey introduction at the rainy seaside, the railway accident foreseen in the palms of several of the passengers, and the final confession and comment. If not a man of letters, A. V. Laider is at least a man of imagination, and Mr. Beerbohm knows the type. As to which of Mr. Beerbohm’s burlesque portraits of authors is the best, opinions quite properly differ. The votes that “Savonarola” Brown loses for the burlesque of his personality he wins back again for the burlesque of his play. Brown was a dramatist who chose his subject on a novel principle. He originally thought of writing a tragedy about Sardanapalus, but on looking this up in the Encyclopædia his eye fell on “Savonarola,” and what he read interested him. He did not allow himself to be hampered, however, by historical facts, but adopted the policy of allowing his characters to live their own lives. In the result his blank-verse tragedy introduces us to most of the famous and infamous figures in Italian history. Had Brown lived to finish the fifth act, there is no doubt that he would have introduced Garibaldi--perhaps even D’Annunzio--into his coruscating pageant. He has certainly achieved the most distinguished list of _dramatis personæ_ ever crowded into a brief play. The play as we now possess it can hardly be described as a parody. At least, it is not a parody on any particular play. It makes fun at the expense not only of the worst writer of blank verse now living, but of Shakespeare himself. It is like one of those burlesque operas that were popular thirty years ago, and some of the speeches might have been stolen from _Julius Cæsar Up-to-Date_. The opening scene introduces us not only to a Friar and a Sacristan (wigged by Clarkson), but to Savonarola, Dante, Lucrezia Borgia, Leonardo da Vinci, and St. Francis of Assisi. Savonarola, on seeing Lucrezia, cries, “Who is this wanton?” St. Francis, with characteristic gentleness, reproves him: Hush, Sir! ’tis my little sister The poisoner, right well-beloved by all Whom she as yet hath spared. The central interest of the play is the swaying intensity of the love of the poisoner and Savonarola. In his passion Savonarola at one moment discards the monkish frock for the costume of a Renaissance nobleman. But the sight of his legs temporarily kills Lucrezia’s feeling for him. She scornfully bids him: Go pad thy calves! Thus mightst thou just conceivably with luck Capture the fancy of some serving-wench.