Pope has more virulence and less vehemence than any of the great satirists. His character of Sporus is the perfection of satirical writing. The very sound of words scarify before the sense strikes. IMPRESSIONISTS How few of our young English impressionists knew the difference between a palette and a picture! However, I believe that Walter Sickert _did_--sly dog! TURNER Turner is only a rhetorician in paint. ENGLISH LITERATURE What a stay-at-home literature is the English! It would be easy to name fifty lesser French writers whose names and works are familiar all over the world. It would be difficult to name four of our greatest whose writings are read to any extent outside England. THE WOODS OF AUFFRAY In the distance, through the trees, gleamed a still argent lake, a reticent water that must have held the subtlest fish that ever were. Around its marge the trees and flags and fleurs-de-luce were unbreakably asleep. I fell into a strange mood as I looked at the lake, for it seemed to me that the thing would speak, reveal some curious secret, say some beautiful word, if I should dare to wrinkle its pale face with a pebble. Then the lake took fantastic shapes, grew to twenty times its size, or shrank into a miniature of itself, without ever losing its unruffled calm and deathly reserve. When the waters increased I was very frightened, for I thought how huge the frogs must have become, I thought of their big eyes and monstrous wet feet; but when the water lessened I laughed to myself, for I thought how tiny the frogs must have grown, I thought of their legs that must look thinner than spiders', and of their dwindled croaking that never could be heard. Perhaps the lake was only painted after all; I had seen things like it at the theatre. Anyhow it was a wonderful lake, a beautiful lake. TWO LETTERS OF AUBREY BEARDSLEY Beardsley unfortunately wrote but few letters. The following is characteristic of the humorous courtesy with which he received criticism: _To the Editor of the Pall Mall Budget_. "SIR,--So much exception has been taken, both by the Press and by private persons, to my title-page of 'The Yellow Book,'[1] that I must plead for space in your valuable paper to enlighten those who profess to find my picture unintelligible. It represents a lady playing the piano in the middle of a field. Unpardonable affectation! cry the critics. But let us listen to Bomvet.