and parted with cherry-stones and other cherished possessions to him in bodily fear.

The sight of this precious pair of boon companions, boozing together in the hostelry at mid-day, suggested to him how the secret of the poll-tax might have leaked out. Chowley was one of the lay canons of the archbishop-chancellor's college-a former servant thus provided for; and still kept up communication with the chancellor's household. It was a letter from him that had given information about Reginald's brother's Wycliffism; and it was likely enough that his friend in the household had been able to give him a hint of the chancellor's financial plans, a hint which Docket was just the man

to turn to account.

This suspicion, combined with old and well-founded dislike, made Reginald somewhat cool and distant in his manner to the boon companions, while he chatted familiarly with mine host about the exploit of the Sudbury housewives.

But Chowley was not a man easily disconcerted or kept at arm's length. He was accustomed to be cock of the company at the White Hart, discoursing to all and sundry over his frequent pots of malt liquor in a harsh, rasping voice, which claimed and enforced authority. He was an elaborate talker and prided himself on his continuity of flow. None of his familiars would have dared in his presence to start a new topic till Chowley had exhausted the old one. If they ever did by inadvertence venture, his steady, strident, overbearing voice was soon heard maintaining the continuity of the conversation as if it had never suffered interruption.

Docket, his tap-room ally and constant butt, overpowered and kept in order by Chowley's tongue, his butt not out of good nature, but because he was not sufficiently quick of fence to protect himself, was considerably different in appearance. Abundance of adipose tissue, maintained by continual soaking of ale, they had in common; but while the canon looked puffy and bloated, Docket's face, with all its generous expanse, looked firm and fresh. The canon's eyes, suffused with alcoholic glitter and turbid with dyspepsia, stood out of his head like boiled gooseberries when he was excited: Docket never looked excited, and his large, bluishgrey eyes were his most remarkable feature. A large, full, stolid eye was Will Docket's, set in a clear-complexioned, broad face. If a stranger had caught that eye staring at him, he would have interpreted the stare as meaning nothing but placid curiosity, and would have paid no further attention to it.

If he

had paid attention, it would have been all the same; Docket would have continued to stare immovably,like a ruminating ox, and his steady gaze would have betrayed no secret. There seemed to be no intelligence behind that inexpressive look; it seemed to indicate only the peaceful, healthful operation of organic processes in the system of Docket, consequent upon the introduction of large quantities of ale. And yet Docket was what would be described in modern days as a very wideawake young man. Chowley knew well, and often remarked that when Docket emptied his face of all expression, and looked absorbed in vegetable functions, he was slowly cogitating some plan which, like all Docket's plans, had his own private advantage in view.

Before Reginald came in, the eye-Docket had two, but the gaze was so concentrated and steady that you were conscious only of one had been directed in this apparently unmeaning-but really very significantmanner on two strangers to Sudbury, who occupied a settle on the opposite side of the room. It was near the time of the great autumn fair of Stourbridge, near Cambridge, and the strangers, who had arrived at the White Hart that morning, were understood to be bound for the famous mediæval market. They had told the inquisitive host that they had travelled from Harwich, choosing the road by Sudbury as the safest in those troubled times. They seemed Flemish by their dress.

The

They sat with Chowley and Docket on the higher level of the floor at one end of the long room, the fireplace-fireless at this season-between the two couples, small windows in the end on each side of the fireplace throwing marked tracks of light into the room. Their men sat with other undistinguished customers on the lower level of the body of the room, lighted by a long, shallow window on the courtyard side. furniture was simple-two tables, each with a settle on the higher level, and a long table flanked by settles running lengthwise down the principal floor. The main room in a medieval hostelry had to serve three purposes; it had to be a dormitory on occasion, as well as a tap-room and a salle-à-manger. We find a difficulty now in conceiving how furniture could be constructed to serve as bed, or seat, or table, with equal readiness, as occasion demanded. But the ingenuity of our forefathers was equal to the problem. The settles had long and straight backs; you had only to lay one on its back with the top end to the wall, and you had an excellent

framework for a bed. The tables, which, when used as tables, were mounted on trestles, had only to be inverted and laid on the floor, when their under side was seen to be a box into which rushes, or bracken, or sacks, or mattresses might be laid to form as soft and comfortable a couch as the most luxurious sleeper could desire. There might be room for improvement in the way of cleanliness and ventilation, but the arrangement had all the beauty of economy and simplicity.

We are not concerned, however, with the furniture of the middle ages, but with the ways and fortunes of one or two mediæval individuals. When, then, Reginald Hardelot was shown into the public room and marshalled to a place on the higher level, Docket had been regarding the mercantile-looking strangers with meditative, but apparently meaningless, placidity, while Chowley, having finished a game at "tables," or draughts, with his friend as they came in, had been discoursing to the same strangers in continuous flow, with the whole lower floor for an audience. His text had been the outbreak against the tax-farmer, from which he had enlarged on the unsettling tendencies of the time, denouncing, in particular, the monstrous heresies, political and religious, of Wycliff, and the dangerous opening given to raw, crude, presumptuous, self-conceited dolts, by his new institution of poor priests.

One of the strangers, a grey-haired little man, with keen, sunken eyes and a hooked nose, who had given the name of Simon d'Y Ypres, seemed to be of an inquisitive turn, and plied the orator now and then with questions. He had wished to learn more about the new order of priests that Wycliff had established.

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But who appoints them to preach? Who fixes the limit and sphere of their duties?"

"They have no fixed sphere; that is one of their pernicious tenets. The blasphemous knaves say that they are moved of the Holy Spirit in their choice of place and season for preaching, and that this is a higher mandate than the ordination of bishops; but practically it means that they begin when they like, leave off when they like, and go where they like a subversion of all order and authority in matters religious, which only a crazy academic doctor, whom the Church has not rewarded according to his own opinion of his deserts, could have conceived."

"And do they preach what they like?"

"Practically any raw absurdity that hits their ignorant fantasy. In theory they preach the gospel as delivered in Holy Writ, without deference to the interpretation of the church. Their subtle founder pampers their self-conceit by making them believe that the light comes from within themselves, through the special operation of the Holy Spirit. In truth, they give out only what he puts in. They are sponges, which imagine they give forth water generated by a spring within themselves, when they but return the foul slops sucked up from the heretic's overflowing drivel."

Tis perhaps no more safe to call
a year happy till it expires
than to say the same of a man
before his death.
But you

need hardly wait so long to entitle yourself to describe either of them as "remarkable." For of course the man who has passed many years of extraordinary prosperity will not diminish but rather increase his claim to notice by sustaining a series of crushing calamities in his old age; and a year which has, for three-fourths of it run a singularly prosperous course, would be even more assured of distinction among its fellows, if (quod absit!), it were to have a disastrous close. Moreover there are happy circumstances connected with this present year of grace, which the gods themselves, who are as poor hands as mere mortals at undoing the past, would find it impossible to get over. "Fate cannot harm us; we have dined to-day." We have rejoiced in 1887, and the rejoicings have "gone off"-as such festivities cannot always be induced to do with a success which even the most Christian of croakers has found it difficult to bear with resignation. Looking back upon the Jubilee-and I candidly confess that the mellow haze of distance lends a certain charm to it which was wanting at a nearer view,-looking back, I say, upon the Jubilee one cannot but pronounce it, with every desire to spare the feelings of those whose I-told-you-so has remained unuttered, a singularly successful celebration. But even had it been otherwise, the year 1887 would still be entitled to give itself airs over '86, '85, and so on through the very undistinguished lot of predecessorswith an exception here and there, as at '51, '37 (of course) '32, '18, and so forth-down to 1810. Another point of eminence from which it is now too late to displace 1887 is that whereon it stands in respect of the astonishing splendour of its summer. This highly respected, but in these islands much too secluded and retiring season, has this year

really gone far to justify the pretensions put forward on its behalf by poets. The poetic spring of course we have long since given up all hopes of, but summer was actually i-cumen in, by early June and it stayed with us till pretty nearly the end of August. Some meteorologists have said-but what will the meteorologist not say?-that there have been dryer summers within the last fifteen years; appealing for proof thereof to absurd statistics about inches of rainfall. I hardly know which is the more unsatisfying of the two, the scientific person who points to the rain-gauge to prove to you that you have been comparatively less baked by the sun than you were in the year so-and-so; or the too unscientific person who supports the same proposition by the crushing argument that, "That was the year when I had the hay-fever," or that "Don't you remember we took an eleven down to Dingley Dell, and they kept us out all day." Of the two I prefer, and have myself occasionally acted on, the latter principle of thermometric and hygrometric computation; and on the strength of many recollections of personal temperature during the year about to be mentioned, I will boldly challenge the public (professed meteorologists to be barred the use of figures) to recall another summer at once so long, so hot, and so dry as that just concluded, in any year since the year 1868.

THESE æstival glories, however, will soon be forgotten; and probably before 1890 one will again have listened a dozen times to the man who " cannot recollect a fine summer in England since he was a boy." But the Jubilee he will not be able to ignore in that way, even if the anniversary-keeping mania with which we were threatened some time ago should have become acute, and centenaries, and bi-centenaries, and tercentenaries should have made such celebrations a little too common. The eighth of last February was the tercentenary of the execution of Mary Stuart; and though it has not been kept with any special solemnities, either here

It is

or in Scotland, the memory of the event would indeed be perpetuated if the Church of Rome should accede to the suggestion of a French Ultramontane journal, and proceed to the canonization of the unfortunate Queen. It was inevitable that this proposal should excite a certain amount of adverse criticism from Protestants, though a good many of those who have exclaimed against it on the sole ground of the imperfections of Mary's character, appear to forget that in so doing they are by implication undertaking the very serious responsibility of guaranteeing the innocence, from the point of view of secular. ethics, of all the existing occupants of a place in the Roman Calendar. The Consistory which pronounces the beatific decree has a right to insist on its own standard of what constitutes a title to sainthood; and the only really effective retort which could be made to it by an English Protestant would be, if the Anglican rules permitted, to canonize Elizabeth. But anyhow we shall be able to respond next year, for 1888 is the tercentenary of the defeat of the Spanish Armada. also the bicentenary of the English Revolution, and the following year is the centenary of the First Act of that highly sensational French adaptation from our great historical drama, which reached its tragic Fifth in 1793. Perhaps it would be as well that some, if not all, of these double, quadruple, or sextuple jubilees should be left uncelebrated. To "play at" the landing of Dutch William in the south-west of England would probably lead to riot and bloodshed in the north-east corner of Ireland (there is a puzzle for the editor of a foreign "society paper". if foreigners have such things to set his readers); and, as to the Armada-well, considering the unpleasant success with which Admiral Fremantle claims to have played the old game of "the Dutch in the Medway" last August, we had perhaps better wait till our defences are in better trim before we set to work to "humble Philip of Spain." As to the French and their 14th of July, 1789, that anniversary will, no doubt, be impressively kept. The French Republican bestows all the scepticism of his nature upon religion. In politics his more than Macaulayan "cock-sureness is never visited by the slightest shadow of a doubt. Consequently he will celebrate the "Taking of the Bastille " with a whole heart. It is true that, looked at prosaically, the event he commemorates was merely the destruction of a prison almost exclusively reserved for that French noblesse and gentry whose requirements the sovereign people were soon to meet by the erection of a nice new guillo

tine on the Place Louis Quinze. Our good Republican does not look at it in that light for a moment. To him the Fall of the Bastille is a great symbolic incident, containing all the "promise and potency of the great Revolution. Nor does he trouble himself, even after a hundred years, with the inquiry how that is going to end. What a pity that Victor Hugo did not live to include this centenary in his Choses Vues, and to deliver the congratulatory speech, or write the dithyrambic ode in honour of the occasion! "Hugoism" may have deserved Heine's sarcastic description of it as only egoism" carried to a higher power; and the poet's glorifications of Paris were, in a certain sense, only a further mathematical expansion of Hugoism. But they were magnificent performances in the grandiose manner; and no rhapsodist who may be called upon to officiate in 1889 is at all likely to ascend with a step of such imposing confidence to Hugo's heights of sublime unreason. No doubt there will be plenty of the last-named noun about, but it will only too probably wander hither and thither in a futile search for its divorced adjective.

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a

IN the course of the next month or so, a large number of the mob of gentlemen who write with ease, and a still larger number of those who read what is easiest, will have penned or perused that familiar phrase, "The book season is commencing." One wonders how many of them have ever cared to ask themselves why there should be " book season at all; and why if so, it should come in the last quarter of a year. Is there, then, an inquirer might ask, a "close time" for books, a time during which a paternal Legislature protects them from molestation? Are there months in the year when a critic may not "pepper them" in his capacity of sportsman, or serve them up in butter or à la sauce piquante, according to his animus as cook? If any such blessed term of truce exists for them, it has escaped the attention of their authors. Those of whom I have made inquiries on the subject concur in assuring me that their books are, and have always been regarded as fair game at any season of the year. They have been peppered and cut up alike in the leafy spring, and in the days of the iron winter. It was in the month of March, one of these unfortunate writers informed me, that Mr. Anti-Plagiarius drew his covers (brown cloth with gilt lettering) in search of the peculiar game which that distinguished M. F. H. delights to pursue; who, having "found," and let loose

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the pack upon him, contrived to keep a "magnificent run going until far into the golden days of August. Indeed it is pretty evident that these gentlemen - sportsmen recognise no season " for books in the sense in which the fox-hunter, or the gunner, or the angler recognises it for the special quarry of his pursuit; and it seems equally inadmissible to interpret the expression in what may be called the "consumer's sense. It cannot be that there is a season for books as for oysters, and that their literary flavour wants pungency or delicacy in the months without an R. Do the sentiments of the poet seem flabby and his cadences flat at the wrong time of the year? Does the plot of the novel lose its consistency, and the dialogue its freshness, when the "season" has closed? No one, so far as I know, has ever noticed any such change, and if the reading public really takes more kindly to prose and poetry in the last quarter of the year, it must be for some reason of a purely subjective character. If autumn is the season for the turning of the leaf in another than the ordinary sense of the phrase, it must be due to some cause altogether unconnected with the annual revolution of the earth. I presume it is really connected partly with the fact that the holidays are over and the long evenings coming, and partly with the assumption that it is usual with the bulk of educated and intelligent people, to beguile these long evenings with books. As a matter of fact of course the evening is the only time which busy people and everybody is busy nowadays-find to talk about books. It would be obviously impossible to spend much of it in reading them.

Certain kinds of books are of course independent of the season, some of these for obvious reasons. Thus, no doubt a couple of volumes or so of political memoirs would appear even more appropriately at the beginning of the Parliamentary session and the London season, than after they are both over. And there is one class of book which through the operation of causes that it would be unbecoming for the mere prosaic Reason to examine, could not possibly be expected to observe any rules as to the time of its appearance. I refer of course to the effusions of the " new poet.' These I have observed reck little of the procession of the monthsas how should they, if there is anything in divine afflatus, or in the theory of inspiration? It would be ridiculous, and indeed impertinent, to suppose that you can prescribe a time for the descent of the Muse, and, with a view to publication in October, bring her down. early in August as if she were a grouse. Those whom she honours with her visits,

especially with her first visit, must allow her to fix her own time, and if she chooses to appear in February or March they must be ready to receive her. No doubt it may be said that they need do no more at that time than write down what she gives them to utter, and may then keep it for a few months before giving it to the world. It is pretty evident, however, that very few of them do this. The mere fact of subsequent publication is sufficient in many instances to dispose of any such idea. However it is not these instances which donnent à penser to the philosophic mind as every year sends up its flight of new poets, and lengthens out what it would be uncomplimentary to call the "clanging train." It is not of the weakwinged ones who flutter quickly to earth again it is not of the tame geese who mistake their proper habits and habitat, and vainly endeavour to follow their wild brethren, in their chase after something as proverbially difficult to catch as themselves; it is not these, I say, who provide one with such curious and slightly melancholy subjects for reflection. It is the birds who can flythe birds who can and do keep the air, and who seem to take wing in numbers so increasing,that an esteemed weekly chronicler of their appearance has given up the task of counting them in despair. What are we to say of the new poets-for poets many of them are, according to what fifty or even twenty years ago would have been regarded as the fair poetic standard? Are we to adopt the views recently enforced by a versatile writer that genius, poetic and other, abounds among us in these latter days? Or are we to accept the only alternative explanation, which seems to be that "poetry" as distinguished from mere verse can be produced without any genius at all? Alas! must we not admit that either conclusion represents a victory for our universal enemy the commonplace? Can we deny that rarity is just as much in the spiritual, as in the material sphere, an inseparable element of value, and that while the former explanation would reduce genius, the latter would lower poetry, to the position of a drug in the market? The subject is much too difficult and obscure for me to pursue in these desultory pages. Perhaps it is too painful to pursue in any pages. Meanwhile, though you may be bringing down the value of genius, or creating a glut (where hitherto throughout the world's whole history there has been a perpetual "corner") in the divine cereals of the soul, fly on, young poets, fly on! Your occupation is perhaps the most delightful to yourselves of any that it is given to fallen man to practise. No

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