ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Credit is gratefully accorded the New York Times, America, Contemporary Verse, and Poetry: A Magazine of Verse, for permission to reprint several of the pieces collected in this volume. For the privilege of reprinting poems quoted by Kilmer in his articles and lectures, acknowledgment is made to the following publishers: E. P. Dutton & Company, Dodd, Mead and Company, Charles Scribner's Sons, John Lane Company, The Macmillan Company, Methuen and Company, Boni and Liveright, and Burns and Oates. And the permission of George Sterling is greatly appreciated for the right to reproduce his three sonnets on Oblivion. The article on Thomas Hardy, prepared as the Introduction to the Modern Library Edition of "The Mayor of Casterbridge," is reproduced by special arrangement with Boni and Liveright. The publishers of "Warner's Library of the World's Best Literature" have courteously extended permission to reprint here the four essays, originally written for that work, which conclude this volume.

R. C. H.

New York, 1921.

CONTENTS

PAGE
Introduction by Robert Cortes Holliday[13]
THE CIRCUS, AND OTHER ESSAYS
The Circus[45]
The Abolition of Poets[60]
Noon-hour Adventuring[70]
Signs and Symbols[83]
The Great Nickel Adventure[88]
The Urban Chanticleer[96]
Daily Traveling[105]
Incongruous New York[110]
In Memoriam: John Bunny[116]
The Day After Christmas[125]
FUGITIVE PIECES
The Ashman[137]
The Bear That Walks Like a Man[146]
Absinthe at the Cheshire Cheese[153]
Japanese Lacquer[159]
Sappho Rediviva[168]
The Poetry of Gerard Hopkins[180]
Philosophical Tendencies in English Literature[186]
Two Lectures on English Poetry:
The Ballad[197]
The Sonnet[203]
Gilbert K. Chesterton and His Poetry[222]
Lionel Johnson, Ernest Dowson, Aubrey Beardsley[237]
Swinburne and Francis Thompson[253]
A Note on Thomas Hardy[268]
Madison Julius Cawein[275]
Francis Thompson[282]
John Masefield[288]
William Vaughn Moody[302]