Magnificent wind-bag assertiveness! but hopelessly unreasonable. Calmour is more worth thinking about than Willard, only Willard doesn't see it. The creator of a part merits greater consideration than the mime who performs it. I confess to being a lover of fair play, and when a lot of people try to "hustle" a man, I am disposed to fight for him. Anyway, Calmour has a clean and delicate pen, and does not pander to vulgar vice like that wretched old Scandinavian humbug, Ibsen. Why we should abuse Calmour and praise Ibsen passes my comprehension. Except that "foreign" scribblers are all "geniuses" with us at once--they must be, you know, simply because they _are_ foreign; they have a "subtlety," a "flavour," an "ardour," a "naturalism," and--a Nastiness which is not the legitimate inheritance of the English School. Had any one of our own men dared to offer us a "Hedda Gabler," or a "Rosmersholm," or Maeterlinck's piece of bathos, "L'Intruse," he would have been shrieked and howled down with derisive laughter. I often wonder what on earth the faddists of the poor old doddering, doting _Athenæum_ mean by poking and prodding about for sparks of genius in their new "heavy man," William Watson? It is very funny to call him a poet--very funny, indeed. He is a sort of fifth-rate Wordsworth--and while we can just stand the sonnets and shorter poems of Wordsworth at first-hand, a diluted example of his pattern in these days is too much for our patience. I know a good many people--in fact, I meet in social intercourse nearly everybody worth knowing--but as yet I have come upon nobody who reads Watson's poems, or who appear to know anything about Watson. Curious, isn't it? The _Athenæum_ seems to carry no conviction whatever to the Ass-public. Messrs. Trübner sent to me some time ago a book of poems, which first surprised and then fascinated me into the belief that I had discovered an English Petrarch. I think I have, too. If absolute music, perfect rhythm, and exquisite wording of love-thoughts are Petrarchian, then my man is a Petrarch. His book is called "A Lover's Litanies," and the "litanies" are the poems. There are ten of them, and each one has a title borrowed from the old church missal--rather a quaint idea. It would be difficult to match the one called "Vox Amoris" among all the love-poems of the world. Does the dear old purblind _Athenæum_ know anything about this real poet, who has perhaps not been "discovered" by Mr. Grant Allen or Andrew Lang? Cheer up, old _Athenæum_, put on thy spectacles, and look about for the author of these "Litanies," lest the outer world should say thou art napping! People are reading "A Lover's Litanies"--those people who do not know anything about William Watson.