ce of stone," emerged even more creditably than John
Wesley when similarly tempted in Georgia.

I can give no account here of his arrival in Lhassa, the reputation he
gained as a "Chinese" physician, his kindly reception by the Dalai
Lama, or his intimate friendships with the apothecary and the
ex-Minister of Finance. He gives a vivid picture of the life of the
different classes of priests and monks, and the corrupt state of the
Tibetan hierarchy. He describes the rudimentary system of education,
the harsh and haphazard administration, the brutality of punishments,
the system of espionage, the free position of women and the practice
of polyandry, the filthy personal habits of the people, their
superstitions, their occupations, their festivals. I do not dwell upon
these matters, partly because many of the features described are
common to other oriental countries, but mainly because I am here
considering the peculiar excellence of the book as a book of travel, a
"human document"--as the phrase goes--a record of experience which has
taken the stamp of a most interesting personality.

VIII

FRANCIS THOMPSON

In _The Blue Bird_ of Maeterlinck we are told of a child who puts on a
magic hat and turns a fairy diamond and sees all that was ugly and
sordid transformed into something transcendently beautiful. There was
no need for Francis Thompson to find a magic hat; the poetic instinct
which was always with him gave him the insight into another poet's
nature; he saw through, around, and beyond those unlovely passages in
the life of Shelley which made Matthew Arnold, for once so strangely
an adherent of Mrs. Grundy, exclaim, "What a set! What a world!" There
are few appreciations in the English language comparable to his essay
on Shelley. Fixing his eyes on what seems to him essential in the man,
Thompson finds that everything else explains itself to the observer
who will see with the poet, who can understand his sufferings, and
imagine his delights. And so his essay is no ordinary study in
criticism. He sets himself, indeed, as Pater would have done, to find
what it is that makes the specific worth of the poet. But there is no
laborious calculating of values; rather a lavish pouring forth of the
just meed of praise, an interpretation, a vindication of Shelley, like
Swinburne's vindication of Blake, in language less passionate,
perhaps, but more perfect in its melody, and more significant in its
imagery, responding t