Well, well! And what of Browning? Why, Browning is dead. Moreover, he is buried in damp, dirty, evil-smelling Westminster Abbey. What more would you have for him? Fame? Let be, let be; he had Notoriety. That must suffice, and that being done, why, all is done, and there is no more to be said. Notoriety is not Fame. Fame is not Notoriety. No man can have both, though he may cheat himself into taking the lesser for the greater, and die happy in the pleasing delusion. Even so Browning died; even so was he honourably interred. May he rest in peace. Amen. XV. OF MORE POETS. Are there no other poets in the crowd save Tennyson and Swinburne? God bless my soul, you don't suppose I am going to offend a whole mob of verse-writers--no other poets? Of course there are others! no end of others. Poets over-run our land even as the locusts over-ran Egypt, and they are all "as good, and a darned sight better," as the Yankees say, than either the Laureate or Algernon Charles, in their own opinion. Mark that last clause, please; it is important. The number of "poets" so styled by themselves is legion; only I, who am a rudely-opiniated and fastidious masquer, decline to recognise their clamorous claims to the deathless laurel. But this does not matter. Who cares what I either decline or accept? My opinions are "nothing to nobody." I only express them for my own satisfaction and amusement; I have no other good to gain thereby. As for the chance of offending the "poets" alluded to, I certainly care not a jot. I have no desire to please them in any way, as I consider most of them an offence and an obstruction in literature. Some people run away with the notion that Edwin Arnold (I give him the full glory of his "Sir" and C.S.I. elsewhere) is a poet. Certainly his books sell. The "Light of Asia," with all its best bits taken out of the original "Mahabhârata," is a perfect triumph of verse-making. All the religious ladies read it because it is so very unexciting and heavenly and harmless, and because, like all pious poetry, it preaches virtue that no one ever dreams of practising. It is a capital book for school prizes, too; it will not hurt any boy or girl to read it, and it may providentially check them in time from trying to write verse themselves. As for the "Light of the World," it will probably meet with the same success among the same class of readers, though it is much inferior to the "Light of Asia," owing to having no "Mahabhârata" in it. But Lewis Morris is quite as great a favourite with the "goodys" of society as Sir Edwin. The "goodys" don't know, and don't want to know, anything about Dante's "Inferno," and are therefore quite satisfied to accept "The Epic of Hades" as _bonâ fide_ "original" matter,--and there are some "sweetly pretty" lines in "A Vision of Saints." Both productions are well adapted for gift-books, and will suit the taste of the demure provincial "misses" who wish to