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A prize, consisting of a copy of _Books of To-Day and Books of
To-Morrow_, will be awarded for the best shot.

MR. BENSON'S 'PATER.'

In no other country has mediocrity such a chance as in England. The
second-rate writer, the second-rate painter meets with an almost
universal and immediate recognition. When good mediocrities die, if they
do not go straight to heaven (from a country where the existence of
Purgatory is denied by Act of Parliament), at least they run a very fair
chance of burial in Westminster Abbey. 'De mortuis nil nisi _bonus_,' in
the shape of royalties, is the real test by which we estimate the authors
who have just passed away. A few of our great writers--Ruskin and
Tennyson, for example--have enjoyed the applause accorded to senility by
a people usually timid of brilliancy and strength, when it is
contemporary. The ruins of mental faculties touch our imagination,
owing, perhaps, to that tenderness for antiquity which has preserved for
us the remains of Tintern Abbey. Seldom, however, does a great writer
live to find himself, in the prime of his literary existence, a component
part of English literature. Yet there are happy exceptions, and not the
least of these was Walter Pater.

His inclusion in the _English Men of Letters_ series, so soon after his
death, somewhat dazzled the reviewers. Mr. Benson was complimented on a
daring which, if grudgingly endorsed, is treated as just the sort of
innovation you would expect from the brother of the author of _Dodo_. 'To
a small soul the age which has borne it can appear only an age of small
souls,' says Swinburne, and the presence of Pater, which rose so
strangely beside our waters, seemed to many of his contemporaries only
the last sob of a literature which they sincerely believed came to an end
with Lord Macaulay.

It was a fortunate chance by which Mr. A. C. Benson, one of our more
discerning critics, himself master of no mean style, should have been
chosen as commentator of Pater. Among the plutarchracy of the present
day a not very pretty habit prevails of holding a sort of inquest on
deceased writers--a reaction against misplaced eulogy--tearing them and
their works to pieces, and leav