L. C. I can hardly understand you. Painting, I admit, is entirely a
lost art, so far as England is concerned. The death of Burne-Jones
brought our tradition to an end. I see no future for any of the arts
except needlework, of which, I am told, there is a hopeful revival. But
in your fields of literature, what a number of great names! How I envy
you!

L. T. Who is there?

L. C. Well, to take the novelists first: you have the great Thomas
Hardy, H. G. Wells, Henry James, Rudyard Kipling, Maurice Hewlett . . . I
can't remember the names of any others just at present. Then take the
poets: Austin Dobson, my own special favourite; and among the younger
men, A. E. Housman, Laurence Housman, Yeats, Arthur Symons, Laurence
Binyon, William Watson--

L. T. (_interrupting_). Who always keeps one foot in Wordsworth's grave.
But all the men you mention, my dear Cullus, belong to the last century.
They have done their best work. Hardy has become mummy, and Henry James
is sold in Balham. Except Hardy, they have become unintelligible. The
theory that 'to be intelligible is to be found out' seems to have
frightened them. The books they issue are a series of 'not-at-home'
cards--sort of P.P.C.'s on posterity. And the younger poets, too, belong
to the last century, or they stand in the same relation to their
immediate predecessors, to borrow one of your metaphors, as _l'art
nouveau_ does to Chippendale. Oh, for the days of Byron, Keats, and
Shelley!

L. C. All of whom died before they were matured. You seem to resent
development. In literature I am a mere _dilettante_. A fastidious
reader, but not an expert. I know what I don't like; but I never know
what I shall like. At least twice a year I come across a book which
gives me much pleasure. As it comes from the lending library it is never
quite new. That is an added charm. If it happens to have made a
sensation, the sensation is all over by the time it reaches me. The book
has matured. A quite new book is always a little crude. It suggests an
evening paper. There at least you will agree. But to come across a work
which Henry James published, say, last year, is, I assure you, like
finding a Hubert Van Eyck in the Brompton Road.

L. T. I wish I could share your enthusiasm, or that I could change
places with you. Every year the personality of a new artist is revealed
to you. I know you only pretend not to admire the modern school of
painting. You fin