After expressing these views I suppose I should not offer any suggestions at all with regard to ‘The Best Hundred Books,’ but I hope you will allow me the pleasure of being inconsistent, as I am anxious to put in a claim for a book that has been strangely omitted by most of the excellent judges who have contributed to your columns.  I mean the Greek Anthology.  The beautiful poems contained in this collection seem to me to hold the same position with regard to Greek dramatic literature as do the delicate little figurines of Tanagra to the Phidian marbles, and to be quite as necessary for the complete understanding of the Greek spirit.

I am also amazed to find that Edgar Allan Poe has been passed over.  Surely this marvellous lord of rhythmic expression deserves a place?  If, in order to make room for him, it be necessary to elbow out some one else, I should elbow out Southey, and I think that Baudelaire might be most advantageously substituted for Keble.

No doubt, both in the Curse of Kehama and in the Christian Year there are poetic qualities of a certain kind, but absolute catholicity of taste is not without its dangers.  It is only an auctioneer who should admire all schools of art.

TWELFTH NIGHT AT OXFORD

(Dramatic Review, February 20, 1886.)

On Saturday last the new theatre at Oxford was opened by the University Dramatic Society.  The play selected was Shakespeare’s delightful comedy of Twelfth Night, a play eminently suitable for performance by a club, as it contains so many good acting parts.  Shakespeare’s tragedies may be made for a single star, but his comedies are made for a galaxy of constellations.  In the first he deals with the pathos of the individual, in the second he gives us a picture of life.  The Oxford undergraduates, then, are to be congratulated on the selection of the play, and the result fully justified their choice.  Mr. Bourchier as Festa the clown was easy, graceful and joyous, as fanciful as his dress and as funny as his bauble.  The beautiful songs which Shakespeare has assigned to this character were rendered by him as charmingly as they were dramatically.  To act singing is quite as great an art as to sing.  Mr. Letchmere Stuart was a delightful Sir Andrew, and gave much pleasure to the audience.  One may hate the villains of Shakespeare, but one cannot help loving his fools.  Mr. Macpherson was, perhaps, hardly equal to such an immortal part as that of Sir Toby Belch, though there was much that was clever in his performance.  Mr. Lindsay threw new and unexpected light on the character of Fabian, and Mr. Clark’s Malvolio was a most remarkable piece of acting.  What a difficult part Malvolio is!  Shakespeare undoubtedly meant us to laugh all through at the pompous steward, and to join in the practical joke upon him, and yet how impossible not to feel a good deal of sympathy with him!  Perhaps in this century we are too