law's provisions) "I pondered whether the
Church would be powerful enough to shield me . . if I divulged to that
establishment." And this is the phrase that may remind us of the
eighteenth-century writers of prose, and among those writers of none so
readily as of Bolingbroke: it occurs in that passage of Esther's life in
which, having lost her beauty, she resolves to forego a love unavowed.
"There was nothing to be undone; no chain for him to drag or for me to
break."

If Dickens had had the education which he had not, his English could not
have been better; but if he had had the _usage du monde_ which as a
young man he had not, there would have been a difference. He would not,
for instance, have given us the preposterous scenes in _Nicholas_
_Nickleby_ in which parts are played by Lord Frederick Verisopht, Sir
Mulberry Hawke, and their friends; the scene of the hero's luncheon at a
restaurant and the dreadful description of the mirrors and other
splendours would not have been written. It is a very little thing to
forgive to him whom we have to thank for--well, not perhaps for the
"housefull of friends" for the gift of whom a stranger, often quoted,
once blessed him in the street; we may not wish for Mr. Feeder, or Major
Bagstock, or Mrs. Chick, or Mrs. Pipchin, or Mr. Augustus Moddle, or Mr.
F.'s aunt, or Mr. Wopsle, or Mr. Pumblechook, as an inmate of our homes.
Lack of knowledge of the polite world is, I say, a very little thing to
forgive to him whom we thank most chiefly for showing us these
interesting people just named as inmates of the comedy homes that are not
ours. We thank him because they are comedy homes, and could not be ours
or any man's; that is, we thank him for his admirable art.

SWINBURNE'S LYRICAL POETRY

The makers of epigrams, of phrases, of pages--of all more or less brief
judgements--assuredly waste their time when they sum up any one of all
mankind; and how do they squander it when their matter is a poet! They
may hardly describe him; nor shall any student's care, or psychologist's
formula, or man-of-letters' summary, or wit's sentence define him.
Definitions, because they must not be inexact or incomprehensive, sweep
too wide, and the poet is not held within them; and out of the mere
describer's range and capture he may escape by as many doors as there are
outlets from a forest. But much ready-made platitude brings about the
world's guesses at a poet, and false and flat thought