erses for the bibliophile, delighting in
the details of purple and gold, the illustrations and ornaments for his
new volume! These pieces are for the few--for amateurs, but we may all
be touched by his grief for the little lass, Erotion. He commends her in
Hades to his own father and mother gone before him, that the child may
not be frightened in the dark, friendless among the shades

"_Parvula ne nigras horrescat Erotion umbras_
_Oraque Tartarei prodigiosa canis_."

There is a kind of playfulness in the sorrow, and the pity of a man for a
child; pity that shows itself in a smile. I try to render that other
inscription for the tomb of little Erotion:

Here lies the body of the little maid
Erotion;
From her sixth winter's snows her eager shade
Hath fleeted on!
Whoe'er thou be that after me shalt sway
My scanty farm,
To her slight shade the yearly offering pay,
So--safe from harm--
Shall thou and thine revere the kindly _Lar_,
And _this_ alone
Be, through thy brief dominion, near or far,
A mournful stone!

Certainly he had a heart, this foul-mouthed Martial, who claimed for the
study of his book no serious hours, but moments of mirth, when men are
glad with wine, "in the reign of the Rose:" {9}

"_Haec hora est tua, cum furit Lyaeus_,
_Cum regnat rosa, cum madent capilli_;
_Tunc mevel rigidi legant Catones_."

But enough of the poets of old; another day we may turn to Carew and
Suckling, Praed and Locker, poets of our own speech, lighter lyrists of
our own time. {10}

ON VERS DE SOCIETE

_To Mr. Gifted Hopkins_.

Dear Gifted,--If you will permit me to use your Christian, and prophetic,
name--we improved the occasion lately with the writers of light verse in
ancient times. We decided that the ancients were not great in verses of
society, because they had, properly speaking, no society to write verses
for. Women did not live in the Christian freedom and social equality
with men, either in Greece or Rome--at least not "modest women," as Mr.
Harry Foker calls them in "Pendennis." About the others there is plenty
of pretty verse in the Anthology. What you need for verses of society is
a period in which the social equality is recognized, and in which people
are peaceable enough and comfortable enough to "play with light loves in
the portal" of the Temple of Hymen, without any very definite intentions,
on either