hus, were spitted on their own
critical signs of disapproval. Many reviewers were compelled to read the
books which they had criticised without perusal, and it was terrible to
watch the agonies of the worthy pressmen who were set to this unwonted
task. 'May we not be let off with the preface?' they cried in piteous
accents. 'May we not glance at the table of contents and be done with
it?' But the presiding demons (who had been Examiners in the bodily
life) drove them remorseless to their toils.

"Among the condemned I could not but witness, with sympathy, the
punishment reserved for translators. The translators of Virgil, in
particular, were a vast and motley assemblage of most respectable men.
Bishops were there, from Gawain Douglas downwards; Judges, in their
ermine; professors, clergymen, civil servants, writhing in all the
tortures that the blank verse, the anapaestic measure, the metre of the
'Lay of the Last Minstrel,' the heroic couplet and similar devices can
inflict. For all these men had loved Virgil, though not wisely: and now
their penance was to hear each other read their own translations."

"That must have been more than they could bear," said Lady Violet

"Yes," said Mr. Witham; "I should know, for down I fell into Tartarus
with a crash, and writhed among the Translators."

"Why?" asked Lady Violet.

"Because I have translated Theocritus!"

"Mr. Witham," said Lady Violet, "did you meet your ideal woman when you
were in the Paradise of Poets?"

"She yet walks this earth," said the bard, with a too significant bow.

Lady Violet turned coldly away.

* * *

Mr. Witham was never invited to the Blues again--the name of Lord Azure's
place in Kent.

The Poet is shut out of Paradise.

CHAPTER XII: PARIS AND HELEN

The first name in romance, the most ancient and the most enduring, is
that of Argive Helen. During three thousand years fair women have been
born, have lived, and been loved, "that there might be a song in the ears
of men of later time," but, compared to the renown of Helen, their glory
is dim. Cleopatra, who held the world's fate in her hands, and lay in
the arms of Caesar; Mary Stuart (_Maria Verticordia_), for whose sake, as
a northern novelist tells, peasants have lain awake, sorrowing that she
is dead; Agnes Sorel, Fair Rosamond, la belle Stuart, "the Pompadour and
the Parabere," can still enchant us from the page of history and
chronicle. "Zeus gave them beauty, whi