l. I sadly suspect that Soames
could not have made more of it than she. Yet, even now, if one doesn't
try to make any sense at all of the poem, and reads it just for the
sound, there is a certain grace of cadence. Soames was an artist--in so
far as he was anything, poor fellow!

It seemed to me, when first I read 'Fungoids,' that, oddly enough, the
Diabolistic side of him was the best. Diabolism seemed to be a cheerful,
even a wholesome, influence in his life.

NOCTURNE.

Round and round the shutter'd Square
I stroll'd with the Devil's arm in mine.
No sound but the scrape of his hoofs was there
And the ring of his laughter and mine.
We had drunk black wine.

I scream'd, 'I will race you, Master!'
'What matter,' he shriek'd, 'to-night
Which of us runs the faster?
There is nothing to fear to-night
In the foul moon's light!'

Then I look'd him in the eyes,
And I laugh'd full shrill at the lie he told
And the gnawing fear he would fain disguise.
It was true, what I'd time and again been told:
He was old--old.

There was, I felt, quite a swing about that first stanza--a joyous
and rollicking note of comradeship. The second was slightly hysterical
perhaps. But I liked the third: it was so bracingly unorthodox, even
according to the tenets of Soames' peculiar sect in the faith. Not much
'trusting and encouraging' here! Soames triumphantly exposing the Devil
as a liar, and laughing 'full shrill,' cut a quite heartening figure,
I thought--then! Now, in the light of what befell, none of his poems
depresses me so much as 'Nocturne.'

I looked out for what the metropolitan reviewers would have to say. They
seemed to fall into two classes: those who had little to say and those
who had nothing. The second class was the larger, and the words of the
first were cold; insomuch that

Strikes a note of modernity throughout.... These tripping
numbers.--Preston Telegraph

was the only lure offered in advertisements by Soames' publisher. I had
hopes that when next I met the poet I could congratulate him on having
made a stir; for I fancied he was not so sure of his intrinsic greatness
as he seemed. I was but able to say, rather coarsely, when next I did
see him, that I hoped 'Fungoids' was 'selling splendidly.' He looked at
me across his glass of absinthe and asked if I had bought a copy. His
publisher had told