be discovered reading poetry under a shady tree what time the bachelor curate of the parish passeth by. All the same, I, who am a Nobody, decline to consider either Morris or Arnold poets. They are excellent verse-compilers though, and suit the tastes of those who do not care about either originality or inspiration. I am nothing if not eccentric, and so I am disposed to place one Alfred C. Calmour among the poets. He has published no poems--he has only produced "poetical" plays, failures all, save "The Amber Heart," and he has been generally "sent to the right about" by persons with infinitely less brain than himself. It is curious to observe what spite and meanness waken in the manly breasts of certain of his fellows at the mere mention of his name. I spoke in praise of "The Amber Heart" on one occasion to a critical brother, and he at once said--"All filched out of Wills's waste-paper basket; he was Wills's secretary." "What of 'Cyrene'?" I asked. "Oh, I don't know anything about 'Cyrene'; but if there's anything good in it, depend upon it, it is stolen from Wills." I relapsed into silence, for I never thought and never shall think anything of Wills, whereas I do think something of Calmour. He is writing a drama, I hear, on "Dante and Beatrice," and I confess to anticipating it with intense interest. I want him to do as my dear friend Oscar Wilde has done--pulverise his enemies by a big success. And why? Because I hate to see a hard-working man "sat upon." And Calmour does work hard, lives hard too, and never complains or "girds" at fate, wherefore I venture to prophecy fame for him one of these days. I have been assured he is conceited. I have never found him so. Suppose he were, is conceit a singular fault in authors? Are we to believe that they are more boastfully disposed than actors, for instance? "What do you think of Calmour?" I asked E. S. Willard on one occasion, when, in all the grave consciousness of "looking" _Judah_ to the life, he stood beside me sipping convivial tea in Wilson Barrett's drawing-room. "Think of Calmour?" he replied, with an inimitable air of self-sufficiency. "I never think of Calmour!"