Everybody interested in Cowper has of course to make out, as best he may, a picture of the poet for his own use. It is curious how sometimes little scraps of things serve to do this better than deliberate efforts. In 1800, the year of Cowper's death, his relative, a Dr. Johnson, wrote a letter to John Newton, sending good wishes to the old gentleman, and to his niece, Miss Catlett; and added: 'Poor dear Mr. Cowper, oh that he were as tolerable as he was, even in those days when, dining at his house in Buckinghamshire with you and that lady, I could not help smiling to see his pleasant face when he said, "Miss Catlett, shall I give you a piece of cutlet?"' It was a very small joke indeed, and it is a very humble little quotation, but for me it has long served, in the mind's eye, for a vignette of the poet, doomed yet _debonnaire_. Romney's picture, with that frightful nightcap and eyes gleaming with madness, is a pestilent thing one would forget if one could. Cowper's pleasant face when he said, 'Miss Catlett, shall I give you a piece of cutlet?' is a much more agreeable picture to find a small corner for in one's memory. GEORGE BORROW Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson, in his delightful _Memories and Portraits_, takes occasion to tell us, amongst a good many other things of the sort, that he has a great fancy for _The Bible in Spain_, by Mr. George Borrow. He has not, indeed, read it quite so often as he has Mr. George Meredith's _Egoist_, but still he is very fond of it. It is interesting to know this, interesting, that is, to the great Clan Stevenson who owe suit and service to their liege lord; but so far as Borrow is concerned, it does not matter, to speak frankly, two straws. The author of _Lavengro_, _The Romany Rye_, _The Bible in Spain_, and _Wild Wales_ is one of those kings of literature who never need to number their tribe. His personality will always secure him an attendant company, who, when he pipes, must dance. A queer company it is too, even as was the company he kept himself, composed as it is of saints and sinners, gentle and simple, master and man, mistresses and maids; of those who, learned in the tongues, have read everything else, and of those who have read nothing else and do not want to. People there are for whom Borrow's books play the same part as did horses and dogs for the gentleman in the tall white hat, whom David Copperfield met on the top of the Canterbury coach. ''Orses and dorgs,' said that gentleman, 'is some men's fancy. They are wittles and drink to me, lodging, wife and children, reading, writing, and 'rithmetic, snuff, tobacker, and sleep.'