The spiritual shell-shock which these scientists impart
  Had not enlarged or cleared the dim horizons of their art;
  They had not learned that mutual love by wedlock is destroyed,
  As proved by the disciples of the school of JUNG and FREUD.

  The hierophants of pure romance, ev’n in its recent mood,
  From STEVENSON to CONRAD, such excesses have eschewed;
  But the psycho-pathologic route was neither mapped nor buoyed
  Until the new discoveries of Messrs. JUNG and FREUD.

  That fiction should be tonic all may readily agree;
  That its function is emetic I, for one, could never see;
  And so I’m glad to find The Times Lit.  Supp. has grown annoyed
  At the undiscriminating cult of Messrs. JUNG and FREUD.

  Let earnest “educationists” assiduously preach
  The value of psychology in training those who teach;
  Let publicists who speak of Mr. GEORGE, without the LLOYD,
  Confound him with quotations from the works of JUNG and FREUD—­

  But I, were I a despot, quite benevolent, of course,
  Armed with the last developments of high-explosive force,
  I’d build a bigger “Bertha,” and discharge it in the void
  Crammed with the novelists who brood on Messrs. JUNG and FREUD.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  “I S’POSE I MUSTN’T GO IN THE GARDEN WHILE YOU’RE RESTING, MUMMY?”

“NO, DEAR—­IT’S TOO DAMP.”

“IF I DID GO IN THE GARDEN WHILE YOU’RE RESTING, MUMMY, WOULD YOU PUNISH ME OR REASON WITH ME?”]

* * * * *

OPERATICS.

It has been suggested before now that Opera might be improved if the singing were done behind the scenes and the performance on the stage were carried out in dumb show by competent actors who looked their parts.  But the idea that the movements on the stage would correspond with the utterances off it is not encouraged by the present lack of collusion between singers and orchestra—­I refer to cases where a performer is required to simulate music on a dummy instrument.

This reflection was forced upon me at a recent performance of Tannhaeuser.  It is true that Miss LILLIAN STANFORD as the Shepherd fingered her pipe in precise accord with the gentleman who played the music for her.  But Mr. MULLINGS, as Tannhaeuser, took the greatest liberties with his harp.  He just slapped it whenever he liked, without any regard to the motions of his collaborator.  As for Mr. MICHAEL, who played Wolfram, he was content to fill in the vocal pauses with a little suitable strumming; but when he sang he was so distracted by his own voice that he left his harp to play the accompaniment without visible assistance from his hand.

For the fine performance which Mr. ALBERT COATES conducted I have no word but of praise, except that I could have wished that Miss ELSA STRALIA had borne a closer resemblance to what is expected of Elisabeth.  She seemed to want to look as much as possible like Venus, whose very opposite she should have been in type as in nature.  Her colouring upset the whole scheme of contrast, and one never began to believe in the sincerity of her spiritual ideals or that her death from a broken heart was anything but an affectation.