That Puvis de Chavannes was not an unfeeling Bonze of art, but a man of tender heart and warm affections was proved after the death of his much-loved Princess Marie Cantacuzene. Two months later sorrow over her loss killed him. He had painted the thousand and one expressive moments in the life of our species as a hymn to humanity, and their contours are eternal. Eternal? A vain phrase; but eternal till the canvas fades and the walls decay, that is nearer the truth. Art is long and appreciation sometimes a chilly consolation. Let us stick to the eternal verities. As D'Annunzio has it: Quella musica silenziosa delle linee immobili era cosi possente che creava il fantasma quasi visibile di una vita piu ricca e piu bella. XVIII THREE DISAGREEABLE GIRLS I HEDDA Hazlitt tells us in a delightful essay about the whimsical notion of Charles Lamb that he would rather see Sir Thomas Browne than Shakespeare. A pleasant recreation is this same picking out "of persons one would wish to have seen." Causing great annoyance to Ayrton at an evening party, Lamb rejected the names of Milton and Shakespeare, selecting those of Browne and Fulke Greville--the friend of Sir Philip Sidney. For the prince of essayists there was mystery hovering about the personalities of this pair. I have often wondered if the most resounding names in history are the best beloved. Or in fiction. What is the name of your favourite heroine? Whom should you like to meet in that long corridor of time leading to eternity, the walls lined with the world's masterpieces of portraiture? I can answer for myself that no Shakespearian lovely dame or Balzacian demon in petticoats would ever be taken off the wall by me. They are either too remote or too unreal, though a word might be said for Valerie Marneffe. In the vasty nebula of the Henry James novel there are alluringly strange women, but if you summon them they fade and resolve themselves into everlasting phrases. In a word, they are not tangible enough to endure the change of moral climate involved in such a game as that played by Charles Lamb and his friends.