Mr. Edmund Gosse, the doyen of English critics, celebrated his seventieth birthday in September, and, through Lord Crewe, a presentation was made to him accompanied by a memorial of almost unexampled length and distinction. Each of the signatories has since received a beautifully printed "memento." Those who saw Mr. Gosse's paper on George Eliot will not need to be told that his powers seem, if anything, to increase with age. Great and diverse as have been his services to literature since his first book was (when he was in his early twenties) published, his finest work, both "original" and critical, has appeared in recent years; and it is easily conceivable that the decade between his seventieth and his eightieth birthdays will be his most productive. A man of letters can be paid no higher compliment: Mr. Gosse has retained, and will retain to the end, the energy and the freshness of youth, whilst his knowledge and experience, in the natural course of things, broaden and deepen. * * * * * The death of Leonid Andreef removes the most savage pessimist of all the pessimists who have come out of modern Russia. But the author of _The Life of Man_, _The Seven that Were Hanged_, and _The Red Laugh_ was not a pessimist for pessimism's sake: he suffered and he expressed his suffering sincerely. One of his short stories--that which tells of a student and his girl who were overtaken by a band of ruffians in a wood--is perhaps the most ghastly story that has ever been written; yet the most revolted reader could not suppose that the author had been less revolted than himself. Andreef had refused enormous offers to work for the Bolsheviks, and died, in great poverty, from shock induced by a rain of Bolshevik bombs near his house. POETRY _Ishak's Song_[5] [5] _This song comes from Flecker's unpublished drama _Hassan_, which those who have seen it consider immeasurably the finest thing that he ever wrote. It has remained in manuscript since his death, awaiting stage production. His _Yasmin_ is another song from the play, and his well-known _Golden Journey_ to _Samarkand_ is its epilogue. Ishak is the Court poet of Haroun-al-Raschid._ Thy dawn, O Master of the World, thy dawn, The hour the lilies open on the lawn, The hour the grey wings pass beyond the mountains, The hour of silence when we hear the fountains, The hour that dreams are brighter and winds colder, The hour that young love wakes on a white shoulder, O Master of the World, the Persian dawn! This hour, O Master, shall be bright for thee: Thy merchants chase the morning down the sea, The braves who fight thy fight unsheath the sabre, The slaves who toil thy toil are lashed to labour, For thee the waggons of the world are drawn-- The ebony of night, the red of dawn!