It is as a poet that we celebrate Gray’s bicentenary, but those persons who do not care for poetry may celebrate him as a man and a letter-writer. As a man he is secure of our affection as soon as we get to know him, and any one may know him who will read his letters, of which there is a great store; and still more have come to light lately, and have been well edited by Mr. Paget Toynbee. There are few men of letters of so attractive a nature as Gray. Perhaps he is the most lovable of all except Charles Lamb, and with Lamb, despite many obvious differences, he has many points in common. They were both solitary creatures living a recluse life, in the world but not of it, their best companions among the dead; they were both exquisite critics; they were both a prey to melancholy, or rather, as Gray said, to ‘leukocholy’; white bile not black; they had both a delicate and delightful humour; they were both the soul of gentle goodness. And so it comes about that the letters of both, in which they live to us, are among the few external goods which are necessary to happiness. The charm of a letter of Gray’s lies partly in this interest of his character, and partly in the perfect felicity with which everything is said. There is nothing slovenly, or far-fetched, or pompous, or makeshift; even in the shortest and apparently most hasty note, his touch is perfectly sure and his taste faultless; if we except some Hogarthian passages which smack of the age rather than the individual. It might not seem probable beforehand that the letters of a man whose days went ‘round and round like the blind horse in the mill’—‘swinging from chapel or hall home and from home to hall or chapel’—could have much to say that would be of general interest. Occasionally, indeed, he goes a journey—the grand tour with Walpole, or to the Highlands, or to see his friend Wharton at Old Park, or to Stoke Poges to his relations, and then we get lively enough descriptions. But these are episodes. The main topics of his every-day correspondence are his melancholy or his indolence, Mason’s poetry, Cambridge and Church news, the British Museum, politics, criticism of current literature,—Rousseau, or Sterne, or Dodsley’s poets,—his dab of musick and prints,’ gothick, hyacinths, and the weather. Occasionally, only occasionally, he allows himself to slip out a little town gossip, ‘as a decayed gentlewoman would a piece of right mecklin or a little quantity of run tea, but this only now and then, not to make a practice of it.’ _THE REAL THING: ‘S. O. S.’_ BY WILLIAM HOPE HODGSON. Copyright, 1917, by William Hope Hodgson, in the United States of America. ‘Big liner on fire in 55.43 N. and 32.19 W.,’ shouts the Captain, diving into his chart-room. ‘Here we are! Give me the parallels!’ The First Officer and the Captain figure busily for a minute.