and Herder, leading on to Goethe. But the interest remains psychical rather than historical. The duke is a type of those natures who, with an intense susceptibility to artistic influences, have no real force of character or conception in the background, and fall victims to a neurotic desire, which approaches near to vulgarity, to cause a commotion among stolid and commonplace persons, because they are conscious of their inability, from want of real intellectual energy, to impress or influence the higher natures. The whole volume, then, is based on an idea of intellectual and artistic revolt; each of the four types depicted, Watteau, Denys, Sebastian, and Duke Carl, is a creature born out of due time, and suffering from the isolation that necessarily comes from the consciousness of being out of sympathy with one’s environment. In all four there is a vein of physical malady. Watteau and Sebastian are phthisical, and Denys and Duke Carl are of unbalanced mind. This tendency to dwell on what is diseased and abnormal has a curious psychological interest; and it will be observed, too, that all the four figures depicted are youthful heroes, endowed with charm and beauty, but all overshadowed by a presage of death. There is thus something of the _macabre_, the decadent element, about the book. It will be as well here to consider the two other Imaginary Portraits, “Emerald Uthwart” (1892) and “Apollo in Picardy” (1893), because, though of slightly later date, they in reality belong to the same series. “Apollo in Picardy” is one of the purest pieces of fantasy that Pater ever composed. In its _motif_ it much resembles “Denys l’Auxerrois,” the conception being that of a reincarnation of a sort of pagan spirit, perhaps a fallen deity, in the midst of a monastic world. Prior Saint-Jean, bred as a monk, is occupied in middle age in the composition of an abstruse book of astronomy and music, dry and scientific enough. He is sent, being in indifferent health, down to the Grange of the monastery, to superintend the building of a great monastic barn. He takes with him a novice named Hyacinth, the pet of the community, neat, serviceable, frank, boyish. The first evening after their arrival the Prior goes into the granary, and finds there asleep among the fleeces a young serf of the monastery, a youth of extraordinary beauty, with a strange harp lying beside him. The Prior mutters a collect, conscious of a certain unholy charm, and goes softly away. The next day he finds the serf waiting upon them. The great barn is built, and a series of mysterious and inexplicable circumstances occurs. The serf seems to inspire a sort of wild gaiety, a spontaneous art, into the builders, and manifests, too, an almost Satanical strength.