literature." If these phrases do not finish him off, nothing will. An original, powerful, passionate writer is always "slated," and always "sells." Witness the career of one Emile Zola. With all his faults, the man is a great poet; realism and romance unite in strange colours on his literary palette, and with his forceful brush he paints life in all its varied aspects fearlessly and without any regard for outside opinions. His one blemish is the blemish of the whole French nation--moral Nastiness. But if we talk of "poets" who, though making their bread-and-butter out of the writing of prose, still insist on belonging to the gods of Parnassus, none of the stringers of rhyme and jinglers of ballads, and weavers of "sagas" and the like, that afflict this enlightened and imaginative nation, could write such a true poem from end to end as "Le Rêve." Such consummate art, such unravelling of exquisite romance out of commonplace material, is not to be discovered in the English literary brain. The English literary brain is dull, lumpish, and heavy--the English literary worker is dominated by one idea, and that is, how much hard cash shall he get for his work? And thus it is that poets, real poets, are rarer than swallows in snow; so that is why I am slightly exercised in my mind respecting the Petrarch sort of minstrel I spoke of a while ago. He is unquestionably a poet, and seems to get on without any "booming." This strikes me as very odd. However, most of the "best" men go unboomed. No occasion to puff a good article. As for the pretended poets, countless as the sands of the sea, there is a great consolation in the reflection that in a few more years they will all be as though they never had been. Good old Posterity will know nothing about them, and herein Posterity is to be heartily congratulated. Poetical gnats must live like other gnats, I suppose--they are rather troublesome, and make a buzzing noise in one's ears, but as their whole existence lasts no more than a day, we must have patience till the sun sets. XVI. TO A MIGHTY GENIUS. "O Rudyard Kipling! Phœbus! What a name, To fill the speaking trump of future Fame!"