But if invidious distinctions between great men are inexact and tiresome, I opine that it is ungenerous and ignoble to declare that when a great man has just died, we really cannot judge of him or his work because we have been his contemporaries. The caution of obituary notices seems to me cowardly, and the reviews of books are cowardly too. We have become Laodiceans. We are even fearful of exposing imposture in current literature lest we get into hot water with a publisher. During a New Year week I was invited by Lord and Lady Lyonesse to a very diverting house-party. This peer, it will be remembered, is the well- known radical philanthropist who owed his title to a lifelong interest in the submerged tenth. Their house, Ivanhoe, is an exquisite gothic structure not unjustly regarded as the masterpiece of the late Sir Gilbert Scott: it overlooks the Ouse. Including our hosts we numbered forty persons, and the personnel, including valets, chauffeurs, and ladies'-maids brought by the guests, numbered sixty. In all, we were a hundred souls, assuming immortality for the chauffeurs and the five Scotch gardeners. On January 2nd somebody produced after dinner a copy of the _Petit Parisien_ relating the plebiscite for the greatest Frenchman of the nineteenth century; another guest capped him with the _Evening News_ list. The famous _Pall Mall Gazette_ Academy of Forty was recalled with indifferent accuracy. Conversation was flagging; our hostess looked relieved; very soon we were all playing a variation of that most charming game, _suck-pencil_. At first we decided to ignore the nineteenth century. The ten greatest living Englishmen were to be named by our votes. Bridge and billiard players were dragged to the polling-station in the green drawing-room. Lord Lyonesse and myself were the tellers. I shivered with excitement. One of the Ultimatelies of Churton Collins seemed to have arrived: it was Gotterdammerung--the Twilight of the Idols. And here is the result of the ballot, which I think every one will admit possesses extraordinary interest: Hall Caine. Marie Corelli. Rudyard Kipling. Lord Northcliffe. Sir Thomas Lipton. Hichens. Chamberlain. Barrie. George Alexander. Beerbohm Tree.