Chapter I: Front Matter (1)

THE LONDON
MERCURY

Edited by J. C. Squire

Volume I

1919 November to April 1920

London The Field Press Ltd

PRINTED AT
THE FIELD PRESS
WINDSOR HOUSE
BREAM'S BUILDINGS
LONDON E·C4

INDEX TO VOLUME I

M·CM·XIX NOVEMBER APRIL M·CM·XX

REGULAR ARTICLES

page
AMERICA, A Letter from 232
Bibliographical Notes 73, 194, 325, 458, 581, 718

BIBLIOGRAPHIES OF MODERN AUTHORS:
Beerbohm, Max 626
Belloc, Hilaire 366
Bridges, Robert Seymour 753
Brooke, Rupert 123
Chesterton, G. K. 496
Clutton-Brock, Arthur 366
Davies, W. H. 122
De La Mare, Walter 122
Flecker, James Elroy 239
Freeman, John 497
Hardy, Thomas 122
Hewlett, Maurice 625
Meynell, Alice 754
Saintsbury, George 238
Book Production Notes 231, 359, 495, 621, 752
Books of the Month 78, 201, 332, 468, 593, 727

Correspondence 77, 198, 329, 462, 585, 721

DRAMA, The:
Calvinists of the Drama, The 112
_Candida_ 755
Children's Plays 498
Demand and Supply 501
_Duchess of Malfi, The_ 368
_Grierson's Way_ 755
Intellectual Drama, The 241
_John Ferguson_ 755
_Living Corpse, A_ 111
_Marriage à la Mode_ 627
Materialism and Poetry 242
_Medea_ 755
Miniature Ballet 755
Pantomime, The Change in the 499
Poetic Drama, The 240
_Pygmalion_ 755
Theatre, The Influence of the Existing 113
_Three Sisters, The_ 755
_Young Visiters, The_ 755

EDITORIAL NOTES:
American Copyright 131, 389
Art, Ugliness, and Incomprehensibility 385
Auction Room Knock-Out, The 516
Literature of 1919, The, and the
Prospects of Literature 257
Ministry of Fine Arts, A 513
National Theatre, The 641
Objects of the LONDON MERCURY 1, 129

FINE ARTS, The:
Black Country, The 634
Comic Drawing, British 373
Epstein, Recent Sculpture by
Jacob 633
Fine Arts, The 116
Goupil Gallery Salon 375
Grant, Paintings by Duncan 634
Group-making and Group-breaking 245
London Group, The 247
Matisse, M. Henri 374
Meaning of Impressionism, The 759
National Gallery, The 632
Nevinson's Exhibition, Mr. 246
New English Art Club, The 504
Renoir, Auguste 759
War Pictures at Burlington House 503

FRANCE, A LETTER FROM:
The Present State of the French Novel 105
The French Poetry of To-day 360
The Young Reviews 622

Learned Societies, etc. 108, 235, 363, 465, 590, 724

LITERARY INTELLIGENCE:
Andreef, Leonid, Death of 136
Bullen, A. H., Death of 647
Burne-Jones, Lady, Death of 520
Chesterton, G. K. 263
Cummings, Bruce, Death of 135
Dehmel, Dr. Richard, Death of 519
_Dial, The_ 392
Dobson, Austin, Eightieth Birthday of 391
Flecker, James Elroy 263
Gosse, Edmund, Seventieth Birthday of 136
Hardy, Thomas, Presentation to 135
New Edition of his Works 263
James, Henry, Letters of 263
Micro-organisms in Paper 264
Osler, Sir William, Death of 391
Smith, G. D., Death of 648
Thomas, Edward, Memorial to 519

MUSIC:
Audience, The Function of the 764
Beecham Opera, The 248
Concerts 377
Covent Garden 376
Naturalisation of Opera in England, The 763
Promenade Concerts, The 119
Purcell and His Orchestra 637
Purcell and Shakespeare 635
Resurrection of an Opera, The 635
Rubinstein's Recital, Mr. Arthur 506
Scriabin Recital, A 508
Spanish Music, Modern 507
Surrey's Opportunity, The 764

Publications, Select List of 124, 251, 379, 509, 638, 766

OCCASIONAL CONTRIBUTIONS IN PROSE

ARCHITECTURE as Form in Civilisation 574

Autographs, A Collection of 320

Barbellion, W. N. P. 543

Blake as a Prophet, On 283

Blind Thamyris 403

Bridges' Lyrical Poems, Robert 708

Butler, Samuel 164

Classic of the Future, A Little (Somerville and Ross) 555

Crane, Stephen: A Note without Dates 192

Creatures, The 275

Crystal Vase, The 176

Donne, John 435

Eighteenth-Century Poetry 155

Eliot, George 34

English, The Teaching of 62

Foreshore of London, The 663

Future Poet and Our Time, The 44

James, Henry--I 673

Jonson, Ben 184

Mackenzie, The Novels of Mr. Compton 448

Misadventures 149

Music, On Interpretation in 694

Particles, An Article on 71

Photography and Art 301

Prose and Mortality 312

Prose, On 671

Psycho-Analysis and the Novel 426

Records, A Case for 685

Rhyme, The Romance of 416

Satirists, Forgotten 565

Servants, On 533

Shelley and His Publishers 291

Smile of the Sphinx, The 16

Walpole, Horace 52

POEMS

Almswomen 525

Beechwood 656

Bryan, Bryan, Bryan, Bryan! 396

Buzzards, The 138

Coming of Green, The 523

Country Mood, A 272

Draft for "A First and Last Song" 271

Early Chronology 11

Evening Sky in March, The 12

_Fortunatus Nimium_ 393

Gallipoli, Lines Written in 267

Glimpse from the Train, A 265

Going and Staying 7

Hippolytus, The Modern 524

House That Was, The 14

Inglis, Elsie 531

Intimacy 527

Ishak's Song 137

It's Not Going to Happen Again 7

Love's Caution 13

Moon, The 139

Nature's Fruitfulness 524

Night Rapture 529

_Nobis cum Pereant_ 655

November 268

Rock Pool, The 12

Scirocco 273

Search for the Nightingale, The 8

Senses, The 521

Shadow, The 394

Shobeensho 662

"Skindle's" in Poperinghe 649

Soldier Addresses His Body, The 527

Sorrowing for Childhood Departed 532

Storm and Stars 662

Suppose 14

Tarantella 266

To E. G. 394

Weir, By the 395

INDEX OF AUTHORS

Armstrong, Martin:
_The Buzzards_ 138
_The Senses_ 521
_The Coming of Green_ 523

Beerbohm, Max:
On Servants 533

Belloc, H.:
_Tarantella_ 266

Beresford, J. D.:
Psycho-Analysis and the Novel 426

Binyon, Laurence:
_The House That Was_ 14
_Storm and Stars_ 662

Blunden, Edmund:
_Almswomen_ 525

Brett Young, Francis:
_Scirocco_ 273

Bridges, Robert:
_Fortunatus Nimium_ 393

Brooke, Rupert:
_It's Not Going to Happen Again_ 7

Burrows, Francis:
_Nature's Fruitfulness_ 524

Chesterton, G. K.:
The Romance of Rhyme 416

Clutton-Brock, A.:
On Blake as a Prophet 283

Conrad, Joseph:
Stephen Crane: A Note without Dates 192

Davies, W. H.:
_Love's Caution_ 13

De la Mare, Walter:
_Suppose_ 14
The Creatures 275

Dent, Edward J.:
Music 119, 248, 376, 506, 635, 763

Dobson, Austin:
_To E. G._ 394

Flecker, James Elroy:
_Ishak's Song_ 137

Freeman, John:
_The Evening Sky in March_ 12
The Novels of Mr. Compton Mackenzie 448
_Beechwood_ 656

Gibson, Wilfrid Wilson:
_By the Weir_ 395

Gosse, Edmund, C.B.:
George Eliot 34
Henry James--I. 673

Graves, A. P.:
_Shobeensho_ 662

Graves, Robert:
_A Country Mood_ 272

Hannay, Howard:
Photography and Art 301
The Fine Arts 503, 632, 759

Hardy, Thomas, O.M.:
_Going and Staying_ 7
_A Glimpse from the Train_ 265

Hastings, Major L. M.:
_"Skindle's" in Poperinghe_ 649

Henschel, Sir George:
On Interpretation in Music 694

Hewlett, Maurice:
The Crystal Vase 176
_Elsie Inglis_ 531

Huxley, Aldous:
Ben Jonson 184
Forgotten Satirists 565

Ingpen, Roger:
Shelley and His Publishers 291

Jenkinson, Hilary: A Case for Records 685

Kennard, Sir Coleridge, Bart.:
_Draft for "A First and Last Song"_ 271

Leigh, The Rev. Canon N. Egerton:
A Collection of Autographs 320

Lethaby, Professor W. R.:
Architecture as Form in Civilisation 574

Lindsay, Nicholas Vachel:
_Bryan, Bryan, Bryan, Bryan!_ 396

Lynd, Robert:
Horace Walpole 52
John Donne 435

Mason, J. H.:
Book-Production Notes 231, 359, 495, 621, 752

Meynell, Alice:
An Article on Particles 71

Moore, T. Sturge:
Blind Thamyris 403

Nash, John:
The Fine Arts 116, 245, 373

Newbolt, Sir Henry:
_Nobis cum Pereant_ 655

Nichols, Robert:
The Smile of the Sphinx 16
_November_ 268
_Night Rapture_ 529

Rickword, Edgell:
_Intimacy_ 527
_The Soldier Addresses His Body_ 527

Rushby, Kenworth:
_The Modern Hippolytus_ 524

Saintsbury, George:
Eighteenth-Century Poetry 155

Sassoon, Siegfried:
_Early Chronology_ 11

Shanks, Edward:
_The Rock Pool_ 12
Samuel Butler 164
_The Shadow_ 394
W. N. P. Barbellion 543

Shaw-Stewart, Patrick:
_Lines Written in Gallipoli_ 267

Smith, L. Pearsall:
Misadventures 149

Squire, J. C.:
The Future Poet and Our Time 44
_The Moon_ 139
Prose and Mortality 312
Robert Bridges' Lyrical Poems 708

Stobart, J. C.:
The Teaching of English 62

Thibaudet, Albert:
A Letter from France 105, 360, 622

Tomlinson, H. M.:
The Foreshore of London 663

Turner, W. J.:
_The Search for the Nightingale_ 8
_Sorrowing for Childhood Departed_ 532
The Drama 111, 240, 368, 498, 627, 755

Van Deijssel, L.:
Of Prose 671

Williams, Orlo:
A Little Classic of the Future 555

REVIEWS

Accounts Rendered of Work Done and Things Seen, _Buchanan_ 494

Actor, Problems of the, _Calvert_ 502

Addresses in America, _Galsworthy_ 480

Anaphylaxis and Anti-Anaphylaxis, _Besredka_ 228

Appreciations of Poetry, _Hearn_ 93

Archaic England, _Bayley_ 616

Argonaut and Juggernaut, _Sitwell_ 206

Art, Essays on, _Clutton-Brock_ 344

Athenian Days, _Byron_ 83

Athletics, Success in, _Webster, Jenkins_, and _Mostyn_ 224

Balkan Problems and European Peace, _Buxton and Leese_ 351

Banner, The, _Spender_ 733

Battle Line in France, The Romance of the, _Bodley_ 606

Before the War, _Haldane_ 487

Boche and Bolshevik, _Price_ 96

Books in the War, _Koch_ 738

Botany, Applied, _Ellis_ 230

Brooke and the Intellectual Imagination, Rupert, _De la Mare_ 215

Butler, Samuel: A Memoir, _Festing-Jones_ 164

Carmina Rapta, _Fairfax_ 207

Catalysis in Theory and Practice, _Rideal and Taylor_ 101

Catherine of Siena, St., _Pollard_ 484

Cervantes, _Schevill_ 737

Challenge, A., _Hardyman_ 82

Chemistry and Its Mysteries, _Gibson_ 357

Chemistry from the Industrial Standpoint, _Thorne_ 230

Childhood in Brittany Eighty Years Ago, A, _Sedgwick_ 482

Children of No Man's Land, _Stern_ 337

Chorus-Girl, and Other Stories, The, _Tchehov_ 476

Christian Ideas, First, _Selwyn_ 746

Clintons and Others, The, _Marshall_ 598

Clown of Paradise, The, _Creston_ 207

Coal Mining and the Coal Miner, _Bulman_ 744

Colloid Chemistry, Theoretical and Applied, _Ostwald_ 491

Colloids, The Chemistry of, _Zsigmondy_ 491

Comrades in Captivity, _Harvey_ 743

Cosmogony and Stellar Dynamics, _Jeans_ 619

Cottage Building in Cob, Pisé, Chalk and Clay,
_Williams-Ellis_ 354

Country Sentiment, _Graves_ 728

Cousin Philip, _Ward_ 208

Coutts, The Life of Thomas, _Coleridge_ 482

Critic in Pall Mall, A, _Wilde_ 91

Dawn and Night, Poems of the, _Mond_ 82

Dickens, Reade, and Collins, _Phillips_ 606

Discovery 751

Diversions of a Man of Letters, Some, _Gosse_ 89

Dodington, George Bubb:
Patron and Place-Hunter, _Sanders_ 348

Domus Doloris, _Leith_ 481

Donne's Sermons:
Selected Passages with an Essay, _Pearsall Smith_ 213

Douglas, Collected Poems of Lord Alfred 81

Ducks and Other Verses, _Harvey_ 596

Easter Island, The Mystery of, _Routledge_ 355

Economic Consequences of the Peace, The, _Keynes_ 487

Efficiency, Everyday, _Lindsay_ 228

Eli of the Downs, _Peake_ 733

Emerson and His Philosophy, _Hill_ 226

Empire and Commerce in Africa, _Woolf_ 616

Engineering, Foundations of, _Spikes_ 230

Engines of the Human Body, _Keith_ 618

English Course for Schools, An, _Mais_ 62

Europe, The Expansion of, _Abbott_ 93

Europe, Fifty Years of, _Hazen_ 217

Every Man in his Humour, _Jonson_ 243

Far East, The Mastery of the 98

Financial Problems, War-Time, _Withers_ 99

First Plays, _Milne_ 115

Fleurs-de-Lys, _Thorley_ 731

Flora, _Bianco_ and _De la Mare_ 468

Flowers in the Grass, _Hewlett_ 727

Forgotten Places, _Mackenzie_ 81

Fox, Henry:
First Lord Holland, _Ilchester_ 608

Friend to Friend, From, _Ritchie_ 739

Full Circle, _Hamilton_ 473

Galloper at Ypres, A, _Butler_ 606

Garret, In the, _Van Vechten_ 477

General William Booth Enters into Heaven, _Lindsay_ 335

Georgian Poetry, 1918-1919 201

Glory of the Coming, The, _Cobb_ 486

Gold and Iron, _Hergesheimer_ 337

Greek Anthology, Echoes from the, _Legge_ 83

Guild State: Its Principles and Possibilities, The, _Taylor_ 100

Gyroscopic and Rotational Motion, A Treatise on, _Gray_ 226

Hamlet, The Problem of, _Robertson_ 92

Handmaiden of the Navy, The, _Doorly_ 223

Heartbreak House, _Shaw_ 114

Herschel, _Macpherson_ 751

How the War Came, _Loreburn_ 97

Hygiene for Training Colleges, A Text Book of, _Avery_ 750

If All These Young Men, _Wilson_ 208

Illustration, _Meynell_ 375

Images of War, _Aldington_ 594

Imperfect Mother, An, _Beresford_ 733

India, The Government of, _Macdonald_ 490

Industry and Trade, _Marshall_ 220

Inflation, _Nicholson_ 222

Interim, _Richardson_ 473

Invisible Kingdom, An, _Lilly_ 225

Invisible Tides, _Seymour_ 473

Ions, Electrons, and Ionising Radiations, _Crowther_ 618

Ireland a Nation, _Lynd_ 353

Irish Impressions, _Chesterton_ 222

Italian Peasants, Among, _Cyriax_ 478

Jacopone Da Todi, _Underhill_ 346

Jeremy, _Walpole_ 84

Jesus Chapel, Cambridge, The Stones and Story of, _Morgan_ 743

Jonson, Ben, _Smith_ 184

Keats' _Endymion_, An Interpretation of, _Notcutt_ 737

Kiel in the _Hercules_, To, _Freeman_ 96

Kossovo, _Rootham_ 730

Kut Prisoner, A, _Bishop_ 606

League of Nations, A Handbook of the, _Butler_ 489

Leagues of Nations, _York_ 615

Legend, _Dane_ 208

Lehmann, The Life of Liza, _Lehmann_ 486

Limbo, _Huxley_ 598

Lincoln, Abraham:
The Practical Mystic, _Grierson_ 218

Lines of Life, _Nevinson_ 729

London Venture, The, _Arlen_ 477

Madeleine, _Mirrlees_ 208

Man: Past and Present, _Keane_, _Quiggin_, and _Haddon_ 747

Manners of My Time, The, _Dempster_ 741

Mansoul or The Riddle of the World, _Doughty_ 593

Mask, The, _Cournos_ 208

Matter, Some Wonders of, _Mercer_ 357

Measures of the Poets, The, _Bayfield_ 601

Middle Life, Thoughts in, _Locker-Lampson_ 481

Miscellany of Poetry, A, _Seymour_ 471

Modern Science and Materialism, _Elliot_ 493

My Kingdom for a Horse! _Allison_ 96

Napoleon, _Trench_ 83

National Finance, A Primer of, _Higgs_ 101

Nationalisation of the Mines, _Hodges_ 744

Nevill, The Life and Letters of Lady Dorothy, _Nevill_ 219

New Decameron, The, _Various Authors_ 88

New Outlook, The, _Cecil_ 615

New Poems, _Williams_ 205

Night and Day, _Woolf_ 337

October and Other Poems, _Bridges_ 708

Over and Above, _Gurdon_ 88

Oxford Scholar, An: Ingram Bywater, 1840-1914, _Jackson_ 349

Pagan and Christian Creeds, _Carpenter_ 747

Paravane Adventure, The, CORNFORD 487

Paths of Glory, The 732

Peace in the Making, The, _Harris_ 615

Pedlar and Other Poems, The, _Manning-Sanders_ 729

Peel, Recollections of Lady Georgiana, _Peel_ 611

Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant, _Frankau_ 598

Phillpotts, One Hundred Pictures from Eden, _Brewitt_ 740

Physicists, Ten British, _Macfarlane_ 103

Pilgrim in Palestine, A, _Finley_ 479

Playwright, Problems of the, _Hamilton_ 758

Poems, Collected, _Hardy_ 333

Poems, 1916-1918, _Brett Young_ 332

Poems, Selected, _Sackville_ 596

Poetical Works, Excluding the Eight Dramas, _Bridges_ 708

Poland and the Poles, _Boswell_ 223

Poor Relations, _Mackenzie_ 84

Power of a Lie, The, _Bojer_ 337

Prelude, _Nichols_ 598

Race and Nationality, _Oakesmith_ 99

Realities of Modern Science, The, _Mills_ 357

Reconstructors and Reconstruction, _Oxon_ 100

Records, _Fisher_ 607

Responsibilities of the League, The, _Percy_ 489

Revolt of Youth, The, _Hobson_ 88

Reynard the Fox, _Masefield_ 78

Richard Kurt, _Hudson_ 84

Riddle of the Ruthvens, The, _Roughead_ 347

Roast Beef, Medium, _Ferber_ 733

R. L. S., A Book of, _Brown_ 216

Romantic Roussillon, The, _Savory_ 345

Rousseau and Romanticism, _Babbitt_ 604

Russia in Rule and Misrule, _Ballard_ 615

Sacred and Profane Love, _Bennett_ 244

Saint's Progress, _Galsworthy_ 208

Science and Life, _Soddy_ 750

Seals and Documents, _Poole_ 742

Second Country, My, _Dell_ 614

September, _Swinnerton_ 84

Seven Men, _Beerbohm_ 212

Seventeenth-Century English Verse, _Massingham_ 470

Seventeenth-Century Life in the Country Parish, _Trotter_ 351

Shakespeare, Contemporaries of, _Swinburne_ 92

Shakespeare's Versification, A Study of, _Bayfield_ 601

Side Shows, In the, _Benn_ 353

Sir Limpidus, _Pickthall_ 337

Skilled Labourer, The, _Hammond_ 352

Skylark and Swallow, _Gales_ 729

Smith, William: Potter and Farmer, _Bourne_ 744

Social Theory, _Cole_ 745

Soldier Poets, Some, _Sturge Moore_ 215

Soldier to His Son, Any, _Willis_ 83

Sorley, The Letters of Charles 343

South Sea Foam, _Safroni-Middleton_ 214

Springtime and Other Essays, _Darwin_ 605

Station Platform and Other Poems, The, _Mackenzie_ 83

Story of Purton, The, _Richardson_ 741

Submarines and Sea-Power, _Domville-Fife_ 487

Superhuman Antagonists, The, _Watson_ 79

Supreme Adventure, The, _Macandrew_ 101

Sussex in Bygone Days, _Blaker_ 478

Tank Corps, The, _Williams-Ellis_ 217

Tender Conscience, The, _Lynch_ 84

Thomson of Duddingston, The Life of John, _Napier_ 247

Time and Eternity, _Cannan_ 84

Tolstoy, _Noyes_ 737

Trade Unionism, The History of, _Webb_ 612

Turks in Europe, The, _Allen_ 484

Twenty-fifth Division in France and Flanders, The,
_Kincaid-Smith_ 486

Ulster and Ireland, _Good_ 100

Unhappy Far-Off Things, _Dunsany_ 345

Unmarried, The Great, _Gallichan_ 99

Valmouth, _Firbank_ 473

Vector Algebra, Projective, _Silberstein_ 230

Verse, _Kipling_ 333

Verse-Craft, Lessons in, _Ford_ 601

Verses, _Meynell_ 596

Victorian Recollections, _Bridges_ 485

Village Libraries, _Sayle_ 738

Walpole, Letters of Horace 52

War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon, The 206

War Poetry, A Treasury of, _Clarke_ 336

Wheels, 1919 334

Worms and Epitaphs, _Garrod_ 594

Young Physician, The, Brett _Young_ 84

THE LONDON
MERCURY

Vol. I No. 1 November 1919

EDITORIAL NOTES

With these notes we introduce the first number of the LONDON MERCURY. It might, beyond denial, appear in more tranquil and comfortable days. We have just been through a crisis which has brought us within sight of the basic realities of life--food, clothing, housing, security against violence. As soon as the paper was projected we were forced to visualise the likelihood of a time in which paper would be almost unprocurable, printing impossible (save in an amateur way at home), and the distribution of literature a matter of passing sheets from hand to hand. We have had a glimpse into the abyss of disorganisation, and, for the time being at all events, we have managed to keep on the solid ground. But, having conceived this journal, its conductors would have been reluctant to abandon their plans whatever confusion might have supervened. They may fairly claim to have formulated a scheme which, when it is perfectly executed, will meet all the demands of the public which reads old or new books, and of that other and smaller public which is chiefly concerned with the production of new works of the imagination. The more intense the troubles of society, the more uncertain and dark the future, the more obvious is the necessity for periodicals which hand on the torch of culture and creative activity. Literature is of the spirit; and by the spirit man lives. Our traditions are never more jealously to be cherished than when they are threatened; and our literature is the repository of all our traditions.

* * * * *

We think that, with our list of contents before us, we may reasonably say that there has never been in this country a paper with the scope of the LONDON MERCURY. We have had periodicals which have exercised a great critical influence, such as the _Edinburgh Review_ of Jeffrey's and Macaulay's day. We have had periodicals which have published an unusual amount of fine "creative work," such as Thackeray's _Cornhill_. We have at this day the _Times Literary Supplement_, which reviews, with the utmost possible approximation to completeness, the literary "output" of the time; we have weekly papers which review the principal books and publish original verse and prose, and monthly papers which diversify their tables of contents with articles on Molière or Chateaubriand, Byron or Mr. Alfred Noyes. But we have had no paper which has combined as the LONDON MERCURY will do all those various kinds of matter which are required by the lover of books and the practising writer. In our pages will be found original verse and prose in a volume not possible to the weekly paper; full-length literary essays such as have been found only in the politico-literary monthlies; a critical survey of books of all kinds recently published; and other "features," analogues to some of which may be found, one by one, here and there, but which have never before been brought together within a single cover. The LONDON MERCURY--save in so far as it will publish reasoned criticisms of political (as of other) books--will avoid politics. It will concern itself with none of those issues which are the field of political controversy, save only such--the teaching of English, the fostering of the arts, the preservation of ancient monuments are examples--as impinge directly upon the main sphere of its interests. But within the field that it has chosen it will endeavour to be as exhaustive as is humanly possible. The present number is an earnest of its intentions; in early future numbers other sections will be added which will steadily bring it nearer to the ideal that it has set out to reach.

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That ideal comprehends the satisfaction of the current needs of all those who are intelligently interested in literature, in the drama, in the arts, and in music. We shall attempt to make known the best that is being done and, so far as literature is concerned, to assist the process by the publication of original work. But thus far we have mentioned no more than the LONDON MERCURY'S functions as what may be called a "news" paper, an organ for the recording and dissemination of things that have already happened or been done. Its functions, as its conductors conceive them, will include--and this will be the chief of them--the examination of those conditions which in the past have favoured, and in the future are likely to favour, the production of artistic work of the first order, and the formulation and application of sound critical standards.

* * * * *

It is not a matter of attempting to make universal the shibboleths of some coterie or school, or of carrying some technical "stunt" through the country as though it were a fiery cross. We do not propose to maintain (to give concrete examples) that literature _should_ be didactic or that it _should_ be a-moral. We are not interested in urging that the couplet is exhausted, that the sonnet should be revived, that plays should have four or three acts, that rhyme is essential or that it is outworn, that lines should or should not be of regular lengths. We are tied to no system of harmony; we have no dogmas as to the dominance of representation in painting; we would make no hard-and-fast rule about the desirability of drawing a vertical wall as sloping at 45 degrees or of painting a man's face magenta and sage-green. As convenient descriptions we do not object (save sometimes on grounds of euphony) to the terms Futurist, Vorticist, Expressionist, post-Impressionist, Cubist, Unanimist, Imagist: but we suspect them as banners and battle-cries, for where they are used as such it is probable that fundamentals are being forgotten. Our aim will be, as critics, to state and to reiterate what are the motives, and what must be the dominant elements, of all good art, whatever the medium and whatever the idiosyncrasies of the artist, even if he find it convenient to draw on papier-mâché with a red-hot poker, and even if his natural genius impels him to write in lines of one syllable. The profoundest truths about art, whether literary or pictorial, are crystallised in maxims which may have been more often reiterated than understood, but which have undeniably been so often repeated that people now find them tiresome. Of such are "fundamental brainwork," "emotion recollected in tranquillity," "the rhythmical creation of beauty," and "the eye on the object." Each of these embodies truths, and there is indisputable truth also in the statements that a poet should have an ear and that a painter should paint what he sees. These things are platitudes; but a thing does not cease to be true merely because it is trite, and it is disastrous to throw over the obvious merely because it was obvious to one's grandfather. Yet men--and even women--do such things. We have had in the last few years art, so called, which sprang from every sort of impulse but the right one, and was governed by every sort of conceptions but the right ones. We have had "styles" which were mere protests and revulsions against other styles; "styles" which were no more than flamboyant attempts at advertisement akin to the shifting lights of the electric night signs; authors who have forgotten their true selves in the desperate search for remarkable selves; artists who have refused to keep their eyes upon the object because it has been seen before; musicians who have made, for novelty's sake, noises, and painters who have made, for effect's sake, spectacles, which invited the attention of those who make it their business to suppress public nuisances. We have had also theories in vogue the effects of which on mind and heart were such, and were foredoomed to be such, as to wither many talents in the bud. A single positive trend in English literature we do not ask and it is not necessarily desirable. We have heard the complaint from critics of the Gallic school that even in the days of the marvellously fertile English "Romantic generation" there was no one "movement," no Ten Commandments, and everybody was at sixes and sevens. That is the national way, and it probably accounts for our possession of the greatest and most varied imaginative literature that exists. Nevertheless, anarchy is not desirable, nor that worthy frame of mind which extends toleration not merely to the good of all kinds, but to the good and the bad, the intelligent and the foolish indifferently. And surely this toleration has been too commonly in evidence in this country in our time.

Is the contention disputed? Is the fact other than self-evident? Is it necessary to explain and to accentuate the confusion which for the last ten years has been evident in the creative and in the critical literature of this country? There have been, as there always are, writers who have cheerfully continued writing as their predecessors have written, serious parodists of Milton, of Tennyson, and of George Eliot. These least of all can be said to be in the tradition of English letters; for that tradition has been a tradition of constant experiment and renovation. There has been a central body of writers--from Mr. Hardy, Mr. Bridges, and Mr. Conrad to the best of the younger poets--who have gone steadily along the sound path, traditional yet experimental, personal yet sane. But there has been also a large number of young writers who have strayed and lost themselves amongst experiments, many of them foredoomed to sterility. Young men, ignoring the fundamental truth expressed in the maxim, "Look in thy heart and write," have attempted to make up poems (and pictures) "out of their heads." Others, defying the obvious postulate that all good writing will carry at least a superficial meaning to the intelligent reader, have invited us to admire strings of disconnected words and images, meaningless and even verbless. Others, turning their backs on those natural affections and primary interests the repudiation of which means, and must always mean, the death of the highest forms of literature, have concentrated upon the subversion of every belief by which man lives. They have sapped at the bases of every loyalty, and sneered at every code, oblivious to both social welfare and social experience. They have been, such of them as profess the moralistic preoccupation, very contemptuous of "clean living and no thinking," but the dirty living and muddled thinking that they have offered as a substitute have been no great improvement. They have been, such of them as have the preoccupation of the artist, so anxious to look at the abnormal and the recondite that they have forgotten what are and must be the main elements of man's life and what the most conspicuous features in man's landscape. We have had an orgy of undirected abnormality. The old object of art was "what oft was said but ne'er so well expressed"; the object of many of the new artists has been what was never said before and could not possibly be expressed worse. The tricks of abnormality have been learnt. Young simpletons who, twenty years ago, would have been writing vapid magazine verses about moonrise and roses have discovered that they have only to become incoherent, incomprehensible, and unmetrical to be taken seriously. Bad writers will, without intellectual or æsthetic impulse, pretend to burrow into psychological (or physical) obscurities which are no more beyond the artist's purview than anything else, provided he responds to them, but which have the advantage for an insincere writer that they enable him to talk nonsense that honest unsophisticated readers are unable to diagnose as nonsense. Year after year we have new fungoid growths of feeble pretentious impostors who, after a while, are superseded by their younger kindred; and year by year we see writers who actually have some intelligence and capacity for observation and exact statement led astray into the stony and barren fields of technical anarchism or the pitiful madhouse of moral antinomianism. At bottom vanity and pretence are the worst of vices in a young writer, but they may be encouraged or discouraged, even these; and we have seen times and places in which black was called white.

* * * * *

Amid this luxuriant confusion the voices of critics at once sane and informed have been few. For the most part our older critics have tended to treat the younger generation as a howling menagerie of insensate young beasts, and have failed to keep sufficiently closely in touch with production to discriminate between the traditional and the anarchistic, the sincere and the pretentious, the intelligent and the stupid, the healthy and the vicious, the promising and the sterile. We have ourselves been frequently amused and irritated at finding elderly men of letters alarmed at the "revolutionism of the young," as manifested in Mr. A. or Mr. B., or asking, bewildered, "why the young take Miss C. so seriously," when as a fact A. and B. are merely rowdies of whose foolish books even the young buy only fifty or sixty copies, and the fair C. is a person taken seriously by no serious person of her own generation. Those critics, again, who are constantly in touch with the fruits of the printing press have for the most part got into a state of puzzlement in which they are not merely afraid to make mistakes (lest what looks like a frog may turn out to be an angel), but in which they have almost lost the habit of using their senses for the purpose for which they were meant to be used. Everything is treated with respect. Platitudinous rubbish--so welcome perhaps because it is so easily understood--is treated as though Wordsworth had written it; hectic gibberish of the silliest kind is honoured, at worst, with the sort of deferential reprimand that is applicable to great genius when great genius shows a slight tendency to kick over the traces. Even those of our reviews which do not ignore the best contemporary work more often than not allocate just as much space to the humbug and the _faux bon_. "The public, though dull, has not quite such a skull," as Swinburne's limerick put it. Many bad authors are much talked about but very little read, and critics who never write a line are frequently sound when most of the professionals have gone clean off the rails. Moreover, it is arguable--though we should not, without long consideration, accept the argument--that no amount of misleading criticism or bad example will ruin a man of strong natural genius, which implies perceptions which will not be denied, and a well-defined positive character. Nevertheless, even if we do not exaggerate the ill effects of haphazard and timid or haphazard and reckless criticism, it is surely obvious that both artists and their publics must gain if some of the rubbish can be cleared away. The ship moves in spite of all the barnacles, and it does not lose direction, but its progress might be less troublesome. We have often met persons who have distrusted all reviews because they have bought books on the strength of extravagant reviews and been once bit. We have often met people, too, who have procured what somebody (undeniably "intellectual") has told them to be the latest and most vigorous and representative work of imaginative literature, and, finding it distasteful, have come to the conclusion that the "poets of the day" or the "novelists of to-morrow" are not for them: turning back, then, to their Dickens or Browning or Dionysius of Halicarnassus in the mood of that ghastly pessimist who said that whenever a new book came out he read an old one. These readers are typical of many, and the result of their existence is that the dissemination of the best contemporary literature is (1) less wide than it might be and (2) less rapid than it might be. There is, as a rule--in the economists' term--far too great a "time-lag" in the making of the best reputations. A man often writes for years before he is heard of by the mass of the cultivated readers who are naturally predisposed to like his work, and do like it when at last they meet it. In a nation so large, and with so immense a volume of literary production, such numerous and diverse news-sheets, and such congested and ill-arranged bookshops, this phenomenon is bound to exist in some degree. But it may be minimised, and although we of the LONDON MERCURY cannot hope, and do not desire, to be judged by our aspirations rather than by our performances, we may at least be permitted to say that we shall do our utmost to contribute towards that end.

* * * * *

Even to disclaim an ambition for an infallible pontificate of letters must savour of impertinence. We can only say that what our journal can do in the way of affirming and applying principles of criticism, and giving a conspectus of the best contemporary work, we shall attempt to do. Our other functions we have already outlined, and a beginning is made in this number. We have made no endeavour to arrange a dazzling shop-window of names or "features" for our first number; whatever may be our readers' views concerning this number we can at least assure them that the contributors to subsequent numbers will be not less representative than those here found, and that only a beginning has yet been made towards the complete scheme that we have in view.

_Going and Staying_

The moving sun-shapes on the spray,
The sparkles where the brook was flowing,
Pink faces, plightings, moonlit May,
These were the things we wished would stay;
But they were going.

Seasons of blankness as of snow,
The silent bleed of a world decaying,
The moan of multitudes in woe,
These were the things we wished would go;
But they were staying.

THOMAS HARDY

_It's Not Going to Happen Again_

I have known the most dear that is granted us here,
More supreme than the gods know above,
Like a star I was hurled through the sweet of the world,
And the height and the light of it, Love.
I have risen to the uttermost Heaven of Joy,
I have sunk to the sheer Hell of Pain--
But--it's not going to happen again, my boy,
It's not going to happen again.

It's the very first word that poor Juliet heard
From her Romeo over the Styx;
And the Roman will tell Cleopatra in hell
When she starts her immortal old tricks;
What Paris was tellin' for good-bye to Helen
When he bundled her into the train--
Oh, it's not going to happen again, old girl,
It's not going to happen again.

RUPERT BROOKE

Château Lake Louise, Canada, 1913.

_The Search for the Nightingale_

(_To S. S._)

1

Beside a stony, shallow stream I sat
In a deep gully underneath a hill.
I watched the water trickle down dark moss
And shake the tiny boughs of maidenhair,
And billow on the bodies of cold stone.
And sculptured clear
Upon the shoulder of that aerial peak
Stood trees, the fragile skeletons of light,
High in a bubble blown
Of visionary stone.

2

Under that azurine transparent arch
The hill, the rocks, the trees
Were still and dreamless as the printed wood
Black on the snowy page.
It was the song of some diviner bird
Than this still country knew,
The words were twigs of burnt and blackened trees
From which there trilled a voice,
Shadowy and faint, as though it were the song
The water carolled as it flowed along.

3

Lifting my head, I gazed upon the world,
Carved in the breathless heat as in a gem,
And watched the parroquets green-feathered fly
Through crystal vacancy, and perch in trees
That glittered in a thin, blue, haze-like dream,
And the voice faded, though the water dinned
Against the stones its dimming memory.
And I ached then
To hear that song burst out upon that scene,
Startling an earth where it had never been.

4

And then I came unto an older world.
The woods were damp, the sun
Shone in a watery mist, and soon was gone;
The trees were thick with leaves, heavy and old,
The sky was grey, and blue, and like the sea
Rolling with mists and shadowy veils of foam.
I heard the roaring of an ancient wind
Among the elms and in the tattered pines;
Lighting pale hollows in the cloud-dark sky,
A ghostly ship, the Moon, flew scudding by.

5

"O is it here," I cried, "that bird that sings
So that the traveller in his frenzy weeps?"
It was the autumn of the year, and leaves
Fell with a dizzying moan, and all the trees
Roared like the sea at my small impotent voice.
And if that bird was there it did not sing,
And I knew not its haunts, or where it went,
But carven stood and raved!
In that old wood that dripped upon my face
Upturned below, pale in its passionate chase.

6

And years went by, and I grew slowly cold:
I had forgotten what I once had sought.
There are no passions that do not grow dim,
And like a fire imagination sinks
Into the ashes of the mind's cold grate.
And if I dreamed, I dreamed of that far land,
That coast of pearl upon a summer sea,
Whose frail trees in unruffled amber sleep,
Gaudy with jewelled birds, whose feathers spray
Bright founts of colour through the tranquil day.

7

The hill, the gully, and the stony stream
I had not thought on when this spring I sat
In a strange room with candles guttering down
Into the flickering silence. From the Moon
Among the trees still-wreathed upon the sky
There came the sudden twittering of a ghost.
And I stept out from darkness, and I saw
The great pale sky immense, transparent, filled
With boughs and mountains and wide-shining lakes
Where stillness, crying in a thin voice, breaks.

8

It was the voice of that imagined bird.
I saw the gully and that ancient hill,
The water trickling down from Paradise
Shaking the tiny boughs of maidenhair.
There sat the dreaming boy.
And O! I wept to see that scene again,
To read the black print on that snowy page,
I wept, and all was still.
No shadow came into that sun-steeped glen,
No sound of earth, no voice of living men.

9

Was it a dream or was it that in me
A God awoke and gazing on his dream
Saw that dream rise and gaze into its soul,
Finding, Narcissus-like, its image there:
A Song, a transitory Shape on water blown,
Descending down the bright cascades of time,
The shadowiest-flowering, ripple-woven bloom
As ghostly as still waters' unseen foam
That lies upon the air, as that song lay
Within my heart on one far summer day?

10

Carved in the azure air white peacocks fly,
Their fanning wings stir not the crystal trees,
Bright parrots fade through dimming turquoise days,
And music scrolls its lightning calm and bright
On the pale sky where thunder cannot come.
Into that world no ship has ever sailed,
No seaman gazing with hand-shaded eyes
Has ever seen its shore whiten the waves.
But to that land the Nightingale has flown,
Leaving bright treasure on this calm air blown.

W. J. TURNER

_Early Chronology_

Slowly the daylight left our listening faces.

* * * * *

Professor Brown with level baritone
Discoursed into the dusk.
Five thousand years
He guided us through scientific spaces
Of excavated History; till the lone
Roads of research grew blurred; and in our ears
Time was the rumoured tongues of vanished races,
And Thought a chartless Age of Ice and Stone.

* * * * *

The story ended. Then the darkened air
Flowered as he lit his pipe; an aureole glowed
Enwreathed with smoke; the moment's match-light showed
His rosy face, broad brow, and smooth grey hair,
Backed by the crowded book-shelves.
In his wake
An archæologist began to make
Assumptions about aqueducts (he quoted
Professor Sandstorm's book); and soon they floated
Through desiccated forests; mangled myths;
And argued easily round megaliths.

* * * * *

Beyond the college garden something glinted;
A copper moon climbed clear above the trees.
Some Lydian coin?... Professor Brown agrees
That copper coins _were_ in that culture minted;
But, as her whitening way aloft she took,
I thought she had a pre-dynastic look.

SIEGFRIED SASSOON

_The Rock Pool_

(_To Miss Alice Warrender_)

This is the sea. In these uneven walls
A wave lies prisoned. Far and far away,
Outward to ocean as the slow tide falls,
Her sisters, through the capes that hold the bay,
Dancing in lovely liberty recede.
Yet lovely in captivity she lies,
Filled with soft colours, where the waving weed
Moves gently and discloses to our eyes
Blurred shining veins of rock and lucent shells
Under the light-shot water; and here repose
Small quiet fish and the dimly glowing bells
Of sleeping sea-anemones that close
Their tender fronds and will not now awake
Till on these rocks the waves returning break.

EDWARD SHANKS

_The Evening Sky in March_

Rose-bosom'd and rose-limb'd,
With eyes of dazzling bright,
Shakes Venus mid the twined boughs of the night;
Rose-limb'd, soft-stepping
From low bough to bough,
Shaking the wide-hung starry fruitage--dimmed
Its bloom of snow
By that sole planetary glow.

Venus, avers the astronomer
Not thus idly dancing goes
Flushing the eternal orchard with wild rose.
She through ether burns
Outpacing planetary earth,
And ere two years triumphantly returns
And again wave-like swelling flows;
And again her flashing apparition comes and goes.

This we have not seen,
No heavenly courses set,
No flight unpausing through a void serene:
But when eve clears,
Arises Venus as she first uprose
Stepping the shaken boughs among,
And in her bosom glows
The warm light hidden in sunny snows.

She shakes the clustered stars
Lightly, as she goes
Amid the unseen branches of the night,
Rose-limb'd, rose-bosom'd bright.
She leaps: they shake and pale; she glows--
And who but knows
How the rejoiced heart aches
When Venus all his starry vision shakes:

When through his mind
Tossing with random airs of an unearthly wind,
Rose-bosom'd, rose-limb'd,
The mistress of his starry vision arises,
And the boughs glittering sway
And the stars pale away,
And the enlarging heaven glows
As Venus light-foot mid the twined branches goes.

JOHN FREEMAN

_Love's Caution_

Tell them, when you are home again,
How warm the air was now;
How silent were the birds and leaves,
And of the moon's full glow;
And how we saw afar
A falling star:
It was a tear of pure delight
Ran down the face of Heaven this happy night.

Our kisses are but love in flower,
Until that greater time
When, gathering strength, those flowers take wing,
And Love can reach his prime.
And now, my heart's delight,
Good night, good night;
Give me the last sweet kiss--
But do not breathe at home one word of this!

W. H. DAVIES

_The House That Was_

Of the old house, only a few crumbled
Courses of brick, smothered in nettle and dock,
Or a squared stone, lying mossy where it tumbled!
Sprawling bramble and saucy thistle mock
What once was firelit floor and private charm
Where, seen in a windowed picture, hills were fading
At dusk, and all was memory-coloured and warm,
And voices talked, secure from the wind's invading.

Of the old garden, only a stray shining
Of daffodil flames amid April's cuckoo-flowers,
Or a cluster of aconite mixt with weeds entwining!
But, dark and lofty, a royal cedar towers
By homely thorns: whether the white rain drifts
Or sun scorches, he holds the downs in ken,
The western vale; his branchy tiers he lifts,
Older than many a generation of men.

LAURENCE BINYON

_Suppose ..._

Suppose ... and suppose that a wild little Horse of Magic
Came cantering out of the sky,
With bridle of silver, and into the saddle I mounted
To fly--and to fly;

And we stretched up into the air, fleeting on in the sunshine,
A speck in the gleam
On galloping hoofs, his mane in the wind out-flowing,
In a shadowy stream;

And, oh, when, all lone, the gentle star of evening
Came crinkling into the blue,
A magical castle we saw in the air, like a cloud of moonlight,
As onward we flew;

And across the green moat on the drawbridge we foamed and we
snorted;
And there was a beautiful Queen
Who smiled at me strangely, and spoke to my wild little Horse,
too--
A lovely and beautiful Queen;
Suppose with delight she cried to her delicate maidens:
"Behold my daughter--my dear!"
And they crowned me with flowers, and then to their harps sate
playing,
Solemn and clear;

And magical cakes and goblets were spread on the table;
And at window the birds came in;
Hopping along with bright eyes, pecking crumbs from the platters,
And sipped of the wine;

And splashing up--up to the roof tossed fountains of crystal;
And Princes in scarlet and green
Shot with their bows and arrows, and kneeled with their dishes
Of fruits for the Queen;

And we walked in a magical garden, with rivers and bowers,
And my bed was of ivory and gold;
And the Queen breathed soft in my ear a song of enchantment--
And I never grew old....

And I never, never came back to the earth, oh, never and never;
How mother would cry and cry!
There'd be snow on the fields then, and all these sweet flowers in
the winter
Would wither and die....

Suppose ... and suppose....

WALTER DE LA MARE

THE SMILE OF THE SPHINX

By ROBERT NICHOLS

I.

Long, long ago there dwelt in the pleasant City-of-Towers a young princess of immense riches and of such exceeding beauty that none other could be compared to her. So famous, indeed, became the riches of her beauty and her possessions, that were only less than her beauty, that she was sought in marriage by every kind of personage. In three moons the train of her suitors, or mounted upon gold-stencilled elephants, tassel-fringed camels, palfries of Arabia, ponies of Astrakhan, mules of Nubia, or faring but upon the Sandals-of-Nature along the Road-of-Advantage, became so huge that the citizens of the City-of-Towers being eaten (albeit at no small price) out of hearth and home, petitioned the princely father of the damsel to mitigate, in whatever sort he should think fit, the good fortune of their city, which, possessing such a treasure as the princess Sa-adeh, the Bestower-of-Felicity, admitted to finding its pleasure rather in reflecting upon the value of their jewel than in entertaining those who came to steal it. The ever-benevolent Prince accordingly issued a decree that no suitor was to approach the Princess save on the understanding that if he failed to win her affections his head should pay the forfeit. Forthwith ensued so remarkable a diminution in the number of her suitors that, in a short while, only those whom the Light-of-Love's-Eyes had guided or those whom the Three-thonged-Scourge-of-Need had driven remained mounted or standing before the palace gates. Nor did these linger overlong, for the heart of the Princess was less easily softened than that of the Executioner, who with one sweep of the scimitar relieved the Lover of the Burden-of-Love or severed the Needy from the Vessel-of-Need. Then the beautiful Sa-adeh, the Bestower-of-Felicity, not unfatigued by such a succession of maidenly preoccupations, determined that for a little she would forget the Bonds-of-Necessity and atone somewhat to the citizens of the City-of-Towers for the inconveniences she had brought them. To this end she caused a special litter of cedar wood to be constructed, and, mounting therein, sallied forth to bestow upon the citizens of the City-of-Towers the hitherto-unseen and almost-unendurable beauty of her face.

Now it happened that in this city there was then dwelling a young scribe by name Es-siddeeh, that is the Very Veracious. This youth, the height of whose beauty was almost as remarkable as the depth of his wisdom, had spent the greater number of his days in study; so much so, in fact, that he had never cast his eyes upon a woman to love her, and this in spite of the possession of an enchanting smile, Nature's gift to him, of the power of which he was hardly conscious. Surrounded by parchments, having hung about his neck many little scrolls, with his tablet laid across his knees, daily he sat in his window and, while the traffic flowed by and the crowd shrilled more loudly than a flock of parokeets, raised not his eyes from his papyrus nor regarded any sound but the squeaking of his stylus-reed.

Thus, then, was he sitting when the troating of horns and the bombilation of gongs proclaimed the nearing of the Princess in her progress. But Es-siddeeh paid this din no attention and, though the fantastic shadows of many majestically-apparelled persons fell across his page, lifted not the Gatherers-of-Knowledge from the Leaves-of-Enlightenment. Meanwhile Sa-adeh, lying in her litter, enjoyed a certain satisfaction in the pleasurable recognition the gracious bestowal of the sight of her countenance procured the citizens. This satisfaction she told herself, as the procession advanced, was increased rather than diminished by the spectacle of certain bleared scribes, who, with ears already attached by cobwebs to the lintels of their doors, never lifted eyes as she passed. "For," she reflected, "such insensibility affords me a scale by which to gauge the pleasure I bestow elsewhere."

At this moment she arrived opposite Es-siddeeh's window.

Then the young scribe, feeling the gaze of another fixed upon him, looked up. And the eyes of Es-siddeeh exchanged thoughts with the eyes of Sa-adeh. When he bent to the tablet again, behold the words were to him but foolishness. All the afternoon he sat there wondering why he had spent his youth upon such things as now appeared to him the very vanity of vanities, colourless and the occupation of the myopic. At evenfall, driven abroad by a terrible restlessness, he wandered outside the walls of the city, but the murmuring of the breeze through the groves did but increase his distraction. Toward midnight he returned and, after spending the remainder of the night without sleep, informed his parents of his intention to turn suitor. Greatly perturbed, they besought him to relinquish so hopeless a project. In vain! at the third hour he proceeded to the palace. The gates were shut. When they did at last open he found himself face to face with the Executioner. Involuntarily he recoiled.

"No alms will be given to-day," said the Reliever-of-Headaches.

"I have not come for alms. I wish to see the porter."

"I am the porter."

"I thought you were----"

"So I was. But now that job is at an end. The capacity to love as our forefathers loved is passing away. Even a spirit of commercial enterprise is lacking. The world goes from bad to worse. Yesterday I cut off the heads of princes; to-day I open the door to mendicants. On no one is Fortune harder than I."

"I find that last reflection," returned the scribe, "so general that I grow convinced it must be true. But be of good cheer. Strange as it may seem, I am the bearer of good tidings. There is every likelihood of your shortly resuming your distinguished office--I have come as a suitor to the Princess."

"Have you, indeed? Ha, ha, ha! The coin is as good as earned.... However ... excuse my entertainment. I should not laugh; for understand my heart goes out to you in your public-spirited endeavour not to permit my office to lapse. Ah, if there were only more men of your kidney, and yet ... I regret to have to add that you will not profit me much. For make no mistake, I am a Republican; I believe that handsome is as handsome does. It is therefore my custom to request a little honorarium, in ratio to the means of my customer, in return for the service I render him. For this is a service which is unique, in that he probably has no servant in his suite trained to perform this duty for him, and it is besides a service for which the requirement of one small fee cannot be described as extortionate since the duty is one which being once satisfactorily performed does not require to be repeated."

"But I have not yet incurred the penalty."

"You will. Be reassured and, having no troublesome misgivings on this count, hand me that which in a few hours it will be too late for me to ask."

Es-siddeeh smiled. "Are you not paid by the Court?" he asked.

"I am," replied the other, softening, "and a beggarly wage it is, too, which compels me to make these requisitions. However, since you seem, for all your queer dress, a pleasant fellow, I will reduce my charge."

"Good. I feared I should never be able to pay--my means are so scanty."

"I should inform you that it is as well to pay because, if you do not, my arm, unstrengthened by the sinews of charity, may not perform its office with quite that address which is at once a delight to the spectators and a matter of self-gratification to my customer."

"Your magnanimity," replied the scribe, giving the man a coin, "does indeed bear witness to the superiority of your mind to its present situation and deserves a reward. I hope you will see that I am not disappointed of an interview."

Thereupon the Executioner conducted him into the palace and, leaving him in an inner apartment, acquainted one of the attendant damsels with the object of the scribe's visit.

For some time the maid regarded his dress dubiously.