OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
Going to the Booking-Office.
Poet William Watson's Excursions in Criticism are cheap Excursions. He himself describes them as "Prose Recreations of a Rhymer." "Prosy" would have been the truer epithet. The meeting of an Interviewer with Dr. Johnson is the best, and it is also the last. Poet Watson's criticism of Tess of the D'Urbevilles, his Essay on Ibsen's Plays, and another on George Meredith, may have been recreations to the writer, but, like most of the other papers in this volume, they will never be so considered by the lightheaded and unbiassed reader. What is recreation to William Watson is boredom to the Baron, and, as the latter is inclined to think, to the majority of such of the public as may attempt the perusal of W. W.'s recreations. Let W. W. make no more cheap excursions in criticism,—excepting, of course, for his own private amusement, with which no one has a right to interfere,—but let him "thank the gods he is poetical," and so let him remain. His second best Essay, is on The Punishment of Genius, in which he advocates the post-mortem destruction of every scrap of composition, which its author had never intended for the public eye.
"We've had no rain to speak of for some weeks," observed Mrs. R.; "and, if this goes on, I heard some scientific gentlemen say, the other day, we ought to have the land irritated by hydras."