Of the five stories one, _James Pethel_, is a study of the gambling temperament localised in an attractive but terrifying man, and one, _A. V. Laider_, is an astonishingly clever fantasia on the theme of lying. The other, and more ambitious, three are studies, we might almost call them historical studies, of literature, literary men, and "the literary life." They all relate to that remote period, now faded and therefore a little charming, "the nineties"; they give us types of writers, second or third or tenth rate, whose reputations die, but who are interesting enough to be celebrated as types, if not as individuals. Savonarola Brown--the obscure man who spent his life on an unfinished tragedy on the best blank-verse models--is the most slightly sketched of them; but here what the portrait lacks--perhaps that shadowy figure offered no more lines for the pencil to seize--is more than made up for by the best parody that even Mr. Beerbohm has written. Remove the burlesque, the comic stage directions, the juxtapositions of Lucrezia Borgia, St. Francis, Andrea del Sarto and Pippa (who "passes" in her own inimitable way), and the more extravagant convolutions of the plot, and you will see that Mr. Beerbohm could quite easily have manufactured a play better than most modern poetic dramas, and written in verse at once so fluent and so reminiscent of the best masters as to command the respect of the reviewers, and possibly a production (for a few nights) by some manager ambitious to show that he desired to reunite Literature and the Stage. At times we forget that we are reading a burlesque: POPE. Of this anon. [_Stands over body of Gaoler._] Our present business Is general woe. No nobler corse hath ever Impressed the ground. O let the trumpets speak it! [_Flourish of trumpets._] This was the noblest of the Florentines. His character was flawless, and the world Held not his parallel. O bear him hence With all such honours as our State can offer. He shall interred be with noise of cannon, As doth befit so militant a nature. Prepare these obsequies. [_Papal Officers lift body of Gaoler._] Did Mr. Beerbohm write this? Or was it Brown, fresh from _The Duchess of Malfi_ or _The Broken Heart_?