Was there no hour at even,
No morning cool and boon?"
My Baronite, though not yet entered for the Poet Laureateship, thinks that kind of thing might be reeled off by the mile. Why not
My Maniac, O my Maniac,
Why rode ye forth at eve?
Was there no hour at morning tide,
No water in the sieve?
A Clerk in Our Booking-Office.
Three years ago an American firm issued a princely edition of The Memoir of Horace Walpole, written by Austin Dobson. It was too expensive for mere Britishers, and only a small number of copies found their way to this country. But the literary work was so excellent, that it was pronounced a pity it should be entombed in this costly sarcophagus. Messrs. Osgood, McIlvaine, & Co. have now brought out an edition, in a single handsome volume, at a reasonable price. Horace Walpole has often been written about since he laid down the pen, but never by a more sympathetic hand than Mr. Dobson's, nor by one bringing to the task fuller knowledge of Walpole's time and contemporaries. The charm of style extends even to the notes, usually in books of this class a tantalising adjunct. Mr. Dobson's are so full of information, and so crisply told, that they might with advantage have been incorporated in the text. The volume contains facsimiles of Horace Walpole's handwriting, an etching of Lawrence's portrait, and a reproduction of the sketch of Strawberry Hill which illustrated the catalogue of 1774. Altogether a delightful book that will, my Baronite says, take its place on a favourite shelf of the library that has grown up round the memory of one of the most interesting figures of the Eighteenth Century.