His inclusion in the _English Men of Letters_ series, so soon after his death, somewhat dazzled the reviewers. Mr. Benson was complimented on a daring which, if grudgingly endorsed, is treated as just the sort of innovation you would expect from the brother of the author of _Dodo_. 'To a small soul the age which has borne it can appear only an age of small souls,' says Swinburne, and the presence of Pater, which rose so strangely beside our waters, seemed to many of his contemporaries only the last sob of a literature which they sincerely believed came to an end with Lord Macaulay. It was a fortunate chance by which Mr. A. C. Benson, one of our more discerning critics, himself master of no mean style, should have been chosen as commentator of Pater. Among the plutarchracy of the present day a not very pretty habit prevails of holding a sort of inquest on deceased writers--a reaction against misplaced eulogy--tearing them and their works to pieces, and leaving nothing for reviewers or posterity to dissipate. From the author of the _Upton Letters_ we expect sympathy and critical acumen. It is needless to say we are never disappointed. His book is not merely about a literary man: it is a work of literature itself. So it is charming to disagree with Mr. Benson sometimes, and a triumph to find him tripping. You experience the pleasure of the University Extension lecturer pointing out the mistakes in Shakespeare's geography, the joy of the schoolboy when the master has made a false quantity. In marking the modern discoveries which have shattered, not the value of Pater's criticisms, but the authenticity of pictures round which he wove his aureoles of prose, Mr. Benson says: 'In the essay on Botticelli he is on firmer ground.' But among the first masterpieces winged by the sportsmen of the new criticism was the Hamilton Palace 'Assumption of the Virgin' (now proved to be by Botticini), to which Pater makes one of his elusive and delightful allusions. While the '_School of Giorgione_,' which Mr. Benson thinks a little _passe_ in the light of modern research is now in the movement. The latest bulletins of Giorgione, Pater would have been delighted to hear, are highly satisfactory. Pictures once torn from the altars of authenticity are being reinstated under the acolytage of Mr. Herbert Cook. A curious and perhaps wilful error, too, has escaped Mr. Benson's notice. Referring to the tomb of Cardinal Jacopo at San Miniato, Pater says, 'insignis forma fui--his epitaph dares to say;' the inscription reads _fuit_. But perhaps the _t_ was added by the Italian Government out of Reference to the English residents in Florence, and the word read _fui_ in 1871. _Troja fuit_ might be written all over Florence.