leave it about casually where he may come upon it by accident, or I denounce it in unmeasured terms, which is a fairly sure method of enlisting his interest in it.

It is quite likely that some solemn person may say that my remarks are frequently lacking in good taste; which, correctly defined, is what some people think that every one else ought to think. Voltaire said that Shakespeare was natural and sublime, but had not so much as a single spark of good taste. I shall not presume upon this common attribute to regard myself as a modern Shakespeare, for I do not quite see how these diversions could be dramatized.

Mr. Zangwill says of some of his utterances, that they are "egoistic." "To be egoistic," he tells us, "is not to be egotistic. Egoism should be distinguished from egotism. The egoist offers his thought to his fellow-man, the egotist thinks it is the only thought worth their acceptance." I plead guilty to the most pronounced egoism. It is wholly immaterial to me whether anybody accepts my thoughts. If I am right, it is not my fault, but the reader's misfortune, that he refuses to accept them; if I am wrong, it is better for all that they should not be accepted. Moreover, to be entirely candid, most of my ideas are only the thoughts of other people, borrowed without blushes, and in all likelihood those people had borrowed them also. Macaulay found his famous New-Zealander in Mrs. Barbauld's poem; and more than half a century before the immortal traveller from the antipodes took his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge, Horace Walpole brought a "curious traveller from Lima" to visit England and give a description of "the ruins of St. Paul's." The great church of Sir Christopher Wren was, for the Englishman, the type of the indestructible, and it is significant that of late we have been hearing rumors about its instability following close upon the downfall of the Venetian Campanile.

It is only the great who are suffered to steal with impunity; and Shakespeare may plunder where he will, Dryden filch from Publius Syrus, Molière from Cyrano de Bergerac, and Carlyle from Richter, without serious consequences. Doubtless, each one took his idea from the common source of ideas, without regard for the man who had said his good thing before him. “Oh, life! Oh, Menander! Which of you is the plagiarist?"

A reviewer once sneered at me because he found me, as he erroneously supposed, asserting that Robert Southey's half-witted uncle invented the ancient Arab saying which is the motto of Kehama, "Curses, like chickens, always come home to roost." This is why I now take the

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liberty of explaining that I am not accusing Molière of robbing M. Rostand. I am only referring to what you all know but may have temporarily forgotten, that "what the devil did he want in that galley" may be found not only in Les Fourberies de Scapin, but in the Pédant Joué. One error of judgment in explaining anything leads to another. I know that the phrase about the galley has another version; I have taken my choice. It would doubtless have been more prudent to quote the original French, but I am too indolent to rewrite the page.

It is amusing to note the puzzled air of surprise, mingled with a slight breath of irritation, with which the professional writer, and particularly the journalist, views the amateur who invades the field of authorship. The lawyer is pityingly indulgent towards the silly layman who essays the trial of his own cause; the doctor looks with ill-concealed glee upon the unwary person who experiments with prescriptions taken from Every Man His Own Physician; the haughty graduate of West Point merely despises the captain of militia and will not condescend even to criticise him. But the literary expert is uneasily resentful over the intrusion of the casual scribbler upon his own peculiar territory. He regards it as an unwarranted trespass, and it is difficult for him to hide his real feelings. Still, he has no sufficient reason to repel the amateur, for that worthy seldom takes much by his experiment. When he does not pay the publisher to print his production, he usually derives so little pecuniary profit from his performance that he cannot justly be accused of snatching the bread from any innocent mouth.

In college days, I often marvelled at the wisdom of the professional writers who seemed to have solved every perplexing problem, and who tossed off such easy references to old authors whose works we could not find in our rather exiguous library of that remote period. "What research! What memory!" I thought; and I sighed as I reflected that I could never hope to know a thousandth part as much as they knew. I have since discovered that with a fairly respectable encyclopædia, Bartlett's Dictionary of Familiar Quotations, and one or two compendiums, it is the simplest thing in the world to secure the appearance of learning.

One of these compendiums, now lying on the table, is the thick, uncut, crown-octavo volume, printed "for private distribution" in 1867, by "Henry G. Bohn, F.R.G.S., F.R.A.S., F.R.S.L., F.S.L., F.H.S., F.St.G., F.Eth.S., and Honorary Member of the Institute of Geneva," who must have been, as the irreverent might say, a devil of a fellow. It is called A Dictionary of Quotations from the English Poets, and prefixed to it is an ornamental philobiblon leaf, headed:

Whether old friend or new,

A shy friend or true,
Buff, orange, or blue,
This book is for you.

I am sure that these lines are wholly original, for their simplicity is remarkable. After them comes, "Presented to," and then the autographic inscription, "Francis Welford, Esqr., with the friendly compts of Henry G. Bohn, Oct. 14th, 1869."

"This volume," says Mr. Bohn, in the preface, "whatever its merits or demerits, will have cost me, independently of my personal labor, several hundred pounds; it is not printed for sale, but exclusively for presents to my friends and acquaintances, or persons of public esteem with whom I have had, or may hereafter have, social relations." It has become quite rare, and sells for a round sum; but it is a curious monument of misdirected industry. There cannot now be many persons who would deliberately search in it for appropriate verses. The fashion of "quoting poetry" has gone by, and so has the ostentatious display of learning. It is only once in a while that an occasion presents itself for a