Do you ever read (to go miles off, indeed) the incredible Barbey d'Aurevilly? A psychological Poe--to be for a moment Henley. I own with pleasure I prefer him with all his folly, rot, sentiment, and mixed metaphors, to the whole modern school in France. It makes me laugh when it's nonsense; and when he gets an effect (though it's still nonsense and mere Poery, not poesy) it wakens me. _Ce qui ne meurt pas_ nearly killed me with laughing, and left me--well, it left me very nearly admiring the old ass. At least, it's the kind of thing one feels one couldn't do. The dreadful moonlight, when they all three sit silent in the room--by George, sir, it's imagined--and the brief scene between the husband and wife is all there. _Quant au fond_, the whole thing, of course, is a fever dream, and worthy of eternal laughter. Had the young man broken stones, and the two women been hard-working honest prostitutes, there had been an end of the whole immoral and baseless business: you could at least have respected them in that case. I also read _Petronius Arbiter_, which is a rum work, not so immoral as most modern works, but singularly silly. I tackled some Tacitus too. I got them with a dreadful French crib on the same page with the text, which helps me along and drives me mad. The French do not even try to translate. They try to be much more classical than the classics, with astounding results of barrenness and tedium. Tacitus, I fear, was too solid for me. I liked the war part; but the dreary intriguing at Rome was too much. R. L. S. TO MR. DICK This correspondent was for many years head clerk and confidential assistant in the family firm at Edinburgh. _La Solitude, Hyeres, 12th March 1884._