addle" the whole of Lord Lytton's verse. Poetry
which, as far as published up to 1855, called forth from Leigh Hunt
warm praise for its beauties and mercy for its defects, in these words
embodied in a letter to Mr. John Forster, the friend and biographer of
Charles Dickens.--

"I have read every bit of Owen Meredith's [his now
well-known pseudonym] volume, and it has left me in a state
of delighted admiration. He is a truly musical, reflecting,
impassioned and imaginative poet, with a tendency to but one
of the faults of his contemporaries and that chiefly in his
minor pieces--I mean the doing too much, and the giving too
much importance and emphasis to every fancy and image that
comes across him, so that his pictures lose their proper
distribution of light and shade, nay, of distinction between
great and small. On his greatest occasions, however, he can
evidently rid himself of this fault."

During Lord Lytton's Indian career, those who were on political or
self-interested grounds opposed to his policy--and there were many
such--were wont, as recorded by his daughter, to attempt to discredit
the statesman by reiterating that he was a poet.

As a matter of fact, Aberigh Mackay's acquaintance with Lord Lytton's
poetry was mainly, if not entirely, based upon a volume edited by N.A.
Chick, and published in Calcutta in 1877, quaintly entitled: "The
Imperial Bouquet of Pretty Flowers from the Poetical Parterre of
Robert Lord Lytton, Viceroy and Governor-General of India."

Our Author's knowledge of Lord Lytton's Indian Administration was
necessarily based upon the views--_pro_ and _con_--expressed by the
daily newspaper writers of the period, who wrote, of course,
uninitiated in political affairs as a rule, and without those full
expositions now embodied in many notable recent publications, official
and other, foremost among which we would cite Lady Betty Balfour's
History of his Indian Administration, published in 1899, and her
edition of her father's personal and literary letters, issued in two
vols. in 1906.

Verily "Time tries All," and an impartial and notable summary of Lord
Lytton's services to his country, written by the Reverend W. Elvin, is
engraven on the monument to his memory in the crypt of St. Paul's
Cathedral, which was designed and partially carried out by the
sculptor, Mr. Gilbert.

+HE WAS A DIPLOMATIST RICK IN THE QUALITIES, OFFICIA