Max Beerbohm, I dare say (and I believe it has been said before), is the most subtly gifted English essayist since Charles Lamb. It is not surprising that he has (now for many years) been referred to as "the incomparable Max," for what other contemporary has never once missed fire, never failed to achieve perfection in the field of his choice? Whether in caricature, short story, fable, parody, or essay, he has always been consummate in grace, tact, insouciant airy precision. I hope you will not miss "No. 2 The Pines" (in _And Even Now_, from which this selection also comes), a reminiscence of his first visit to Swinburne in 1899. That beautiful (there is no other word) essay shows an even ampler range of Mr. Beerbohm's powers: a tenderness and lovely grace that remind one, almost against belief, that the gay youth of the '90's now mellows deliciously with the end of the fifth decade. He was so enormously old in 1896, when he published his first book and called it his _Works_; he seems much younger now: he is having his first childhood. This portrait of the unfortunate cleric annihilated by Dr. Johnson is a triumphant example of the skill with which a perfect artist can manœuver a trifle, carved like an ivory trinket; in such hands, subtlety never becomes mere tenuity. Max Beerbohm was born in London in 1872; studied at Charterhouse School and Merton College, Oxford; and was a brilliant figure in the _Savoy_ and _Yellow Book_ circles by the time he was twenty-four. His genius is that of the essay in its purest distillation: a clear cross-section of life as seen through the lens of self; the pure culture (in the biological sense) of observing personality. I have often wondered how it came about (though the matter is wholly nonpertinent) that Mr. Beerbohm married an American lady--quite a habit with English essayists, by the way: Hilaire Belloc and Bertrand Russell did likewise. _Who's Who_ says she was from Memphis, which adds lustre to that admirable city. He now lives in Italy. Fragmentary, pale, momentary; almost nothing; glimpsed and gone; as it were, a faint human hand thrust up, never to reappear, from beneath the rolling waters of Time, he forever haunts my memory and solicits my weak imagination. Nothing is told of him but that once, abruptly, he asked a question, and received an answer.