Mr. BENNETT, who does nothing by halves, has mapped out a programme which will occupy his energies for at least two years.  First comes the period of pupilship, which will last for six months.  Then a year on the stage; then six months devoted to the composition of three novels and three plays, each with a Terpsichorean motive.  Already, while engaged on his daily exercises, Mr. BENNETT has found time to revise the titles of some of his earlier works in keeping with his present aims, and two of these have now been appropriately rechristened Anna Pavlova of the Five Towns and Helen of the High Kick.

In the actual technique of his adopted art Mr. BENNETT has already shown extraordinary progress.  The other day, while a wedding party was just about to leave St. George’s, Hanover Square, Mr. BENNETT, who happened to be passing by, took a flying caracole clean over the Rolls-Royce which contained the happy pair.  Those who witnessed the feat say that it eclipsed NIJINSKY in his most elastic mood.  But Mr. BENNETT is not satisfied, and declined an invitation to appear at the Devonshire House Ball last week on the ground that his achievement does not yet square with his ambition.  Moreover he has decided not to dance in public under his real name, but is not yet quite certain whether to choose the artistic pseudonym of Ben Netsky or Cinquecitta—­probably the latter.

Above all he is firmly resolved to preserve in his dancing the sympathetic and humanistic tone of his presentation of life in his books.  It will be a message of hope.  He is determined by his gestural artistry and resilient thistle-downiness to “sanction and fortify the natural human passion for believing that life can somehow, behind all the miseries and the mysteries, mean something profoundly worth while.”  To render justice to his mental and physical agility is beyond our powers.

We have been driven to culling this memorable sentence from the latest and most preternaturally precious of his American admirers.

It is only fair to say that as a dancing fictionist Mr. BENNETT will not be allowed to have it entirely his own way.  Rumours are already afloat of the appearance on the boards of Messrs. CHESTERTON and BELLOC, under the impressive aliases of Campoborgo and Bellocchio, “the Terrible Tarantulators.”  This may be only a wild surmise.  There is however strong a priori evidence in support of the statements that Mr. MASEFIELD is taking lessons in the Fox Trot at Boar’s Hill, and that Lord Northsquith is bringing back with him from Morocco a powerful troupe of Dancing Dervishes, with the intention of installing them ultimately in Downing Street.

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OUR LITERARY LEGISLATORS.

    “AN IMPERIAL POLICY.

    (By Mr. ALFRED BIGLAND, M.P.)

    May I commence my argument by a well-known quotation from Shakespeare,
    ’He knows not England who only England knows’?”—­Liverpool Paper.