Then some of the architecture at Vezelay 'typical of Cluniac sculpture' is pure Viollet-le-Duc, I am assured by a competent authority. A more serious error of Pater's, for it is adjectival, not a fact, occurs in _Apollo in Picardy_--'_rebellious_ masses of black hair.' This is the only instance in the _parfait prosateur_, as Bourget called him, of a cliche worthy of the 'Spectator.' Then it is possible to differ from Mr. Benson in his criticism of the _Imaginary Portraits_ (the four fair ovals in one volume), surely Pater's most exquisite achievement after the _Renaissance_. _Gaston_ is the failure Pater thought it was, and _Emerald Uthwart_ is frankly very silly, though Mr. Benson has a curious tenderness for it. One sentence he abandons as absolute folly. The grave psychological error in the story occurs where the surgeon expresses compunction at making the autopsy on Uthwart because of his perfect anatomy. Surely this would have been a source of technical pleasure and interest to a surgeon, much as a butterfly-collector is pleased when he has murdered an unusually fine species of lepidoptera. Speaking myself as a vivisector of some experience, I can confidently affirm that a well- bred golden collie is far more interesting to operate upon than a mongrel sheep-dog. Nor can I comprehend Mr. Benson's blame of _Denys l'Auxerrois_ as too extravagant and even unwholesome, when the last quality, so obvious in _Uthwart_, he seems to condone. Again, _Marius the Epicurean_ is a failure by Pater's own high standard: you would have imagined it seemed so to Mr. Benson. Dulness is by no means its least fault. In scheme it is not unlike _John Inglesant_; but how lifeless are the characters compared with those of Shorthouse. Both books deal with philosophic ideas and sensations; the incidents are merely illustrative and there is hardly a pretence of sequence. In the historical panorama which moves behind _Inglesant_, there are at least 'tactile' values, and seventeenth-century England is conjured up in a wonderful way; how accurately I do not know. In _Marius_ the background is merely a backcloth for mental _poses plastiques_. You wonder, not how still the performers are, but why they move at all. Marcus Aurelius, the delightful Lucian, even Flavian, and the rest, are busts from the Capitoline and Naples museums. Their bodies are make-believe, or straw from the loft at 'White Nights.' Cornelius, Mr. Benson sorrowfully admits, is a Christian prig, but Marius is only a pagan chip from the same block. John Inglesant is a prig too, but there is blood in his veins, and you get, at all events, a Vandyck, not a plaster cast. The magnificent passages of prose which vest this image make it resemble the _ex voto_ Madonnas of continental churches--a shrine in literature but not a lighthouse.