ollowed in 1877 by 'Proverbs in Porcelain,' and both books,
with additional poems, were printed again in two volumes: 'Old World
Idylls' (1883), and 'At the Sign of the Lyre' (1885). Mr. Dobson's
original essays are contained in three volumes: 'Four Frenchwomen,'
studies of Charlotte Corday, Madame Roland, the Princess de Lamballe,
and Madame de Genlis (1890), and 'Eighteenth-Century Vignettes' (first
series 1892, second series 1894), which touch upon a host of
picturesque and fascinating themes. He has written also several
biographies: of Hogarth, of Fielding, of Steele (1886), of Goldsmith
(1888), and a 'Memoir of Horace Walpole' (1890). He has also written
felicitous critical introductions to many new editions of the
eighteenth-century classics.

Austin Dobson has been most happy in breathing English life into the
old poems of French verse, such as ballades, villanelles, roundels,
and rondeaux; and he has also written clever and satirical fables,
cast in the form and temper of Gay and Prior, with quaint obsolete
affectations, redolent of the classic age of Anne.

So serious is his attitude towards art, and so large his audience,
that the hope expressed in the following rondeau will certainly be
realized:--

In after days, when grasses high
O'er-top the stone where I shall lie,
Though ill or well the world adjust
My slender claim to honored dust,
I shall not question nor reply.

I shall not see the morning sky,
I shall not hear the night-wind sigh;
I shall be mute, as all men must,
In after days.

But yet, now living, fain were I
That some one then should testify,
Saying--_He held his pen in trust_
_To Art, not serving shame or lust._
Will none?--Then let my memory die
In after days!

[Illustration: Signature (Esther Singleton)]

ON A NANKIN PLATE

VILLANELLE

"Ah me, but it might have been!
Was there ever so dismal a fate?"
Quoth the little blue mandarin.

"Such a maid as was never seen:
She passed, tho' I cried to her, 'Wait,'--
Ah me, but it might have been!

"I cried, 'O my Flower, my Queen,
Be mine!'--'Twas precipitate,"
Quoth the little blue mandarin.

"But then ... she was just sixteen,--
Long-eyed, as a lily straight,--
Ah me, but it might have been!

"As it was, from her palankeen
She laughed--'You're a week too late!'"
(Quoth the little blue mandarin.)

"That is why, in a mist of sp