In the gay days of the early nineties before black tragedy had clouded the heavens there was no more daring secessionist from the tedious old ways than the editor of _The Savoy_. To those days, like Dowson’s lover of Cynara, he has ‘been faithful in his fashion.’ If the interest is now not so vivid in his work it is because the centre of art has shifted. If Mr. Symons has not shifted his centre too, but remained faithful to the old dead Gods, it is no crime. It only means that we, when we wish to see him as one of the figures of his group, must shut up his volumes of criticism, forget his views on Toulouse Lautrec and Gerard Nerval, and William Blake, put aside his later verses and his widow’s cruse of writer’s recollections, and turn with assurance to the débonnaire poet of _Silhouettes_ and _London Nights_. It has been said that Mr. Symons stands for ‘a Pagan revolt against Puritanism.’ It is argued, because he was nurtured in nonconformity, art came to him with something of the hysteria a revelation comes to a revivalist meeting. This may be true, but I cannot help thinking that no writer amid all these French influences which he had so eagerly sought out yet remains so typical of the English spirit. It may be heresy, but I always see in mind the gaiety of a Nice carnival in a certain drawing with one solid, solemn face surveying the scene over a starched front. Beneath it is written: ‘Find the Englishman.’ Like the American critic, James Huneker, Mr. Arthur Symons has also occasionally written short imaginative prose studies. One thinks, too, in this respect of Walter Pater’s wonderful _Imaginary Portraits_ and particularly his glorious study of Watteau, and I rather think that this success must have moved the spirit of the two later critics to a noble rivalry. The best, indeed, of Mr. Symons’s _Spiritual Adventures_ are probably those studies which are mostly attached to some theme of art which has been after all the all-engrossing motive of this delightful critic’s life. _An Autumn City_ and _The Death of Peter Waydelin_: the first, a sensitive’s great love for Arles, whither he brings his unresponsive bride; the other, a study quaintly suggestive of a certain painter’s life: both of these sketches are unquestionably more moving than Mr. Symons’s studies of nonconformists quivering at the thought of hell-fire. To them one might add, perhaps, _Esther Kahn_, the history of the psychological development of an actress after the style of _La Faustine_.