In the death of Lord de Tabley, the English world of letters has lost a true poet and a scholar of very varied accomplishments. His friends have lost much more. Since his last attack of influenza, those who knew him and loved him had been much concerned about him. The pallor of his complexion had greatly increased; so had his feebleness. As long ago as May last, when I called upon him at the Athenæum Club in order to join him at a luncheon he was giving at the Café Royal, I found that he had engaged a four-wheeled cab to take us over those few yards. The expression in his kind and wistful blue-grey eyes showed that he had noted the start of surprise I gave on seeing the cab waiting for us. “You know my love of a growler,” he said; “this is just to save us the bother of getting across the Piccadilly cataracts.” I thought to myself, “I wish it were only the bother of crossing the cataracts which accounts for the growler.” Another sign that the physical part of him was in the grip of the demon of decay was that, instead of coming to the Pines to luncheon, as had been his wont, he preferred of late to come to afternoon tea, and return to Elm Park before dinner. And on the occasion when he last came in this way it seemed to us here that he had aged still more; yet his intellectual forces had lost nothing of their power. And as a companion he was as winsome as ever. That fine quality with which he was so richly endowed, the quality which used to be called “urbanity,” was as fresh when I saw him last as when I first knew him. That sweet sagacity, mellowed and softened by a peculiarly quiet humour, shone from his face at intervals as he talked of the pleasant old days when he was my colleague on _The Athenæum_, and when I used to call upon him so frequently on my way to Rossetti in Cheyne Walk to chat over “the walnuts and the wine” about poetry.