To outlive his generation is, perhaps, the worst fate that can befall a man; but this cannot truly be said of Theodore Watts-Dunton, who seemed to be of no generation in particular. His interest in the life of the twentieth century, a life so different from that of his own youth and early manhood, was strangely keen and insistent. Sometimes in talking of his great contemporaries, Tennyson, Meredith, Swinburne, Rossetti, Morris, Matthew Arnold, Borrow, there would creep into his voice a note of reminiscent sadness; but it always seemed poetic rather than personal. It may be said that he never really grew up, that his spirit never tired. His laugh was as youthful as the hearty “My dear fellow,” with which he would address his friends. His most remarkable quality was his youth. His body had aged, his voice had shrunk; but once launched into the subject of literature, Greek verse in particular (he regarded the Attic tongue as the peculiar vehicle for poetic expression), he seemed immediately to become a young man. When quoting his favourite passage from Keats, his voice would falter with emotion. Charm’d magic casements, opening on the foam Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn. These lines he regarded as the finest in English poetry. He possessed the great gift of conversation. Every subject seemed to develope quite naturally out of that which had preceded it, and although in a single hour he would have passed from Æschylus and Sophocles to twentieth-century publishers, there was never any break or suspicion of a change of topic. Seated on the sofa in the middle of his study, with reminders of his friendship with Rossetti gazing down upon him from the walls, he welcomed his friends with that almost boyish cordiality that so endeared him to their hearts. If they had been doing anything of which the world knew, he would be sure to have heard all about it. His mind was as alert as his memory was remarkable; but above all he was possessed of a very real charm, a charm that did not vanish before the on-coming years. It was this quality of interesting himself in the doings of others that retained for him the friendships that his personality and cordiality had created.