Time was when I should have shrunk with terror from so thankless a task as that of reading a manuscript with such a frightful history, but it is astonishing what a long experience in the literary world will do for a man in perplexities of this kind. I read the manuscript and the editor’s courteous but sagacious comments, and I found that the poet had undertaken a subject which was utterly and almost inconceivably alien to his genius. As I read I felt the wistful gaze fixed upon me while the waiter was moving in and out of the room, preparing the luncheon table. “Well,” said he, as I laid the manuscript down, “what do you think? do you agree with the editor?” “Not entirely,” I said. “Not entirely!” he exclaimed; then turning to the waiter, he said, “You can leave the soup, and I will ring when we are ready.” “Not entirely,” I repeated. “With all the editor’s strictures I entirely agree, but he says that by working upon it you may make it into a worthy poem: there I disagree with him. I consider it absolutely hopeless. I regret now that we did not leave the matter until after luncheon, but we will not let it spoil our appetites.” I am afraid it did spoil our appetites nevertheless, for I felt that I had been compelled, for his own sake, to give him pain. He was much depressed, declared that the success of his late book was entirely factitious, and vowed that nothing should ever persuade him to write another line of verse, and that he would now devote his attention to a peer’s duties in the House of Lords. I was so disturbed myself at thus paining so lovable a friend that next day I wrote to him, trying to soften what I had said, and urged him to do as the editor of _The Nineteenth Century_ had suggested, write another poem—a poem upon some classical subject, which he would deal with so admirably. The result of it all was that he found the editor’s strictures on the unlucky poem to be absolutely well grounded, and wrote for _The Nineteenth Century_ ‘Orpheus,’ one of the finest of his later poems. I think these anecdotes of Lord de Tabley will show why we who knew him were so attached to him. II.