. "Clearly only those things that are worth
remembering,--important, vital things!"

Vanessa who was the only person present whose nimble mind foresaw Lord
Henry's conclusion, cheered at this point.

"Very well, then," he continued. "A man who casts his thought or his
emotion into a poetical or mnemonic form, implies that he is dealing
with thoughts or emotions that are important or vital enough to be
remembered. If they fall short of this standard, he is dressing asses in
lions' skins!"

Stephen and Vanessa looked at each other and smiled approvingly.

"The disappointment felt is then all the greater," Lord Henry added,
"seeing that the form leads us to anticipate important things and we do
not get them. In fact," he said, withdrawing a note-book from his breast
pocket, "I made a note the other day of the poet's duty. It is to
prepare for mankind memorisable formulas in universal terms of important
thoughts or emotions."

"But that's almost what I said," Denis protested.

"Yes, almost," Lord Henry replied, with just that restraint in scorn
which makes scorn most scathing.

"The consequence is," Lord Henry concluded, "that according to this view
of poetry, which I believe is the right view, and the view unconsciously
taken by the masses, more than three quarters of Victorian Verse is
simply so much superior drivel."

The baronet's party clapped their hands.

"The works of your Wordsworths, your Tennysons, your Brownings, your
Matthew Arnolds," cried Lord Henry above the noise, "might be distilled
down to one quarter of their bulk and nothing would be lost."

Sir Joseph laughed. "Now I know, now I know!" he ejaculated.

"And as for your very modern poets, they are even worse than the
Victorians. Masefield, for instance, is jejuneness enthroned. How can
you expect the bulk of sane mankind to read poetry, when they repeatedly
encounter this vacuity, this unimportance of thought and emotion,
presented with all the pomp and circumstance of a memorisable form?"

"Bravo, Lord Henry!" Stephen cried.

"But have you read Wordsworth's _Ode on Immortality_?" objected Miss
Mallowcoid, with mantling cheeks and indignant glare. She belonged to
the class of persons who always fancy they have thought of an objection
to a generalisation which the man who made it must have overlooked.

"Yes, of course," replied Lord Henry. "It is a preposterously false and
therefore dangerous thought; but I admit it is magnificently expres