go on in all the magazines and journals telling me the things I knew before--the old stories I read when I was a thoughtless child, the scraps of information familiar to me as copybook maxims, the ancient jokes at which my elders laughed, the snatches of French romance and fable I picked up casually at school. For being always a book-lover it is but natural I should have learned the things wherewith thou instructest the ignorant world; but thou shalt tell me of them again and yet again, good Andrew, and yet I will not murmur nor ask of thee one thought original. Aware of all thou canst say, I still entreat thee, say it! Say it (to quote the jovial old _Saturday_ once more) in "little," that I may have it "lang." And now, ever famous and beloved Andrew, I must for the moment take my leave of thee. The glory of thy reputation is as a band of light around the foggy isles of Britain, and that benighted Europe knows thee not at all is but a trifle to us, though a loss to Europe. When Hall Caine recently found out that he was not celebrated in Germany he wondered thereat and said the Germans had no taste for English literature. No--not though they are the finest Shakesperian scholars in the world and the most ardent lovers of Byron's poesy. "Benighted Fatherland!" inwardly moaned the writer of "Sagas"--"Benighted country that knoweth not my works! Benighted people that have never heard--ye gods, imagine it!--have never heard the name of Kipling!" Oh, dull, beer-drinking, Wagner-ridden disciples of Goethe, Schiller, and Heine! To be ignorant of Kipling! To be only capable of a bovine questioning stare at Caine! To be impervious to the electric name of Lang! To know nothing about the new "Thucydides," R. L. Stevenson! Heaven forgive them, for I cannot. I abjure the Rhineland till it has been to school with Lang's text-books under its arm. Drop Heine, ye besotted slaves of "lager-bier," and read Kipling. _Try_ to read him, anyway. If you can't, my friend Andrew will show you how. Andrew will show you anything that can be shown in English journals and newspapers. But beyond these he cannot go. You must not expect him to expand farther. His incubating work belongs solely to the English Press Poultry-yard--his name, his power, his influence avail, alas! as Nothing, out in the wide, wide world! XIX. BYRON LOQUITUR.