Illa tamen gravior, quae cum discumbere coepit laudat Vergilium, periturae ignoscit Elissae, committat vates et comparat, inde Maronem atque alia parte in trutina suspendit Homerum. cedunt grammatici, vincuntur rhetores, omnis turba tacet, nec causidicus nec praeco loquetur, altera nec mulier. Verborum tanta cadit vis, tot pariter pelves ac tintinnabula dicas pulsari. Jam nemo tubas, nemo aera fatiget; una laboranti poterit succerrere Lunae. imponit finem sapiens et rebus honestis; nam quae docta nimis cupit et facunda videri, crure tenus medio tunicas succingere debet, caedere Silvano porcum, quadrante lavari. non habeat matrona, tibi quae iuncta recumbit, dicendi genus, aut curvum sermone rotato torqueat enthymema, nec historias sciat omnes, sed quaedam ex libris et non intellegat. Odi hanc ego quae repetit volvitque Palaemonis artem servata semper lege et ratione loquendi ignotosque mihi tenet antiquaria versus nec curanda viris opicae castigat amicae verba: soloecismum liceat fecisse marito. JUVENAL: Satire VI. I While there is excellent authority for the statement that the Holy Roman Empire was not holy nor Roman nor an empire, the reader of mediaeval history has, for a century and a half, been left without an equally trenchant definition of what that empire was. In like manner, while it is comparatively easy for the student of modern manners to assert that "literary London" is neither London nor literary, he might find it difficult to amplify this in positive terms unless he described it as "cultured Kensington." The first phrase, like its baffling brethren "a man-about-town" and "the Oxford manner," to which reference has already been made, is part of modern currency and is tendered by the press and accepted by the public without a thought on either side whether it represents any value as an idea. Is the literary London to which newspapers refer synonymous with the committee of the Authors' Society? Is it to be found, of a Sunday afternoon, at Mrs. Leo Hunter's house? Does it lurk, unrecognised and fiercely retiring, in that district which cabmen call Chelsea and more poetic spirits "the Latin Quarter of London"? Or is it but a flight of fancy, like "the upper ten" or "the middle classes"?