Coming to the conclusion of the whole matter, the present writer, who has more than once gone over all that has been written on the subject--with the exception of some things in Romansch and Czech--while he has been engaged on this task, must refuse to discuss at length the motives of the mice or the far-reaching results to their seemingly (though not to the literary critic or historian who has adopted the comparative method) eccentric and ill-timed trick of ‘running after,’ both of which have engaged the attention of some very excellent persons to the exclusion of all other aspects of the problem. Whoever looks at such things with one eye open for the swing of the pendulum will not be easily persuaded that the cleaving blade--for, let it be repeated, the Farmer’s Wife is worthiest of attention here--has not the fullest significance of all, from the _lever de rideau_ of the ‘running after’ to the noisy epilogue of the ‘Never saw such a thing in my life.’ To some, whose _engouement_ for the Classical is not entirely absurd, the structure of the three shorn rodents, in their new simplicity and austerity of outline, will come almost as a ‘Pisgah-sight.’ As a reaction from the fulltailed Romanticism that scampered blindly and heedlessly after what seemed rather a new crotchet than a true ideal, their attitude--not unforeseen at the time when the ‘Carving-knife’ was first menacingly brandished--can at least be tolerated. But to the other extremists, who from their stucco citadel of the sham Romantic have derided the ‘cutting-off,’ and have hailed with contempt the new-old, perhaps to them unfamiliar, form of the blind three, the present writer can hold out no eirenicon. With the exception of some worthy persons who ought to have known better, and who shall be nameless here, the scoffers were for the most part half-educated journalists and other hangers-on to letters, who imagine that it is possible to write a clear lucid style without so much as a glance at Dionysius of Halicarnassus, and who cannot be expected.... Etc., Etc. MR JAMES STEPHENS: ‘SEUMAS BEG AGAIN’ Along the road I met a red-nosed man Who stumbled as he walked. He said to me: ‘You keep away from that pub if you can; It’s all gone queer.’ I said I didn’t see What could be wrong with Doolan’s. ‘I can’t think,’ Said he, ‘what we’ll have next. I went in there, Five minutes since; I’d scarcely got my drink Before three angels with long shining hair Came in. The first two took the dominoes And played daft tunes upon them, while the third Sang songs and balanced bottles on his nose. ’Fore Stephens’ time, such things never occurred! I said I didn’t believe him. But I did. He only whispered: ‘Got a tanner, kid?’ A LECTURE NOT YET WRITTEN OR DELIVERED BY PROFESSOR SIR A. T. QUILLER-COUCH: ON THE DIRECT METHOD (_To be included afterwards in_ ‘The Art of Lecturing’)