As a contrast to the above, it is interesting to recall the preface that an anonymous friend contributed to a volume of Crashaw's verse in the seventeenth century, which, in his own words, "I have impartially writ of this Learned young Gent." Fearing that readers might not appreciate his poetry at its true value, the friend writes, "It were prophane but to mention here in the Preface those under-headed Poets, Retainers to seven shares and a halfe; Madrigall fellowes, whose onely business in verse, is to rime a poore six-penny soule a Suburb sinner into hell;--May such arrogant pretenders to Poetry vanish, with their prodigious issue of tumorous heats, and flashes of their adulterate braines, and for ever after, may this our Poet fill up the better roome of man. Oh! when the generall arraignment of Poets shall be, to give an accompt of their higher soules, with what a triumphant brow shall our divine Poet sit above, and looke downe upon poore Homer, Virgil, Horace, Claudian; &c. who had amongst them the ill lucke to talke out a great part of their gallant Genius, upon Bees, Dung, froggs, and Gnats, &c. and not as himself here, upon Scriptures, divine Graces, Martyrs and Angels." Our prefatory friend set a pace that it is hopeless for modern champions to follow, and they might as well abandon the attempt. James Elroy Flecker, the eldest child of the Rev. Dr. Flecker, who is Head Master of an English school, was born on the fifth of November, 1884, in London. He spent five years at Trinity College, Oxford, and later studied Oriental languages at Caius College, Cambridge. He went to Constantinople in 1910. In that same year signs of tuberculosis appeared, but after some months at an English sanatorium, he seemed to be absolutely well. In 1911 he was in Constantinople, Smyrna, and finally in Athens, where he was married to Miss Skiadaressi, a Greek. In March the dreaded illness returned, and the rest of his short life was spent in the vain endeavour to recover his health. He died in Switzerland, on the third of January, 1915, at the age of thirty. "I cannot help remembering," says Mr. Squire, "that I first heard the news over the telephone, and that the voice which spoke was Rupert Brooke's." He had published four books of verse and four books of prose, leaving many poems, essays, short stories, and two plays, in manuscript. All his best poetry is now included in the _Collected Poems_ (1916). Flecker had the Tennysonian habit of continually revising; and in this volume we are permitted to see some of the interesting results of the process. I must say, however, that of the two versions of _Tenebris Interlucentem_, although the second is called a "drastic improvement," I prefer the earlier. Any poet might be proud of either.