O.S.

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A LEONINE REVIVAL.

Amongst the dead lions of the past, some of us have prematurely reckoned those of Peterborough Court.  MATT.  ARNOLD was supposed to have administered, if not the coup de grace, at any rate a serious blow to their gambollings in Friendship’s Garland.

It is therefore a matter for unfeigned rejoicing to find that they are not only alive but rampant, with all their old splendid command of polysyllabic periphrasis.  One need only turn to the notice of “The John Exhibition” in last Thursday’s Daily Telegraph, from which we select the following page:—­

“It [the exhibition] is a display of purposeful portraiture that helps one to realise the effect which Theotokopoulos produced upon his watchful contemporaries, and to understand why the Cretan continued to walk alone on his way.  If some insist on finding modern El Greco versions of Inspectors and Inquisitors-general in this John gathering, compounded of comparatively innocuous personalities, the privilege is, of course, permissible, and incidentally brightens conversation in irresponsible circles.”

But a higher level of full-throated bravura is attained later on:—­

“If reiteration may also be the mark of the best portraiture, pace Lord Fisher, commendation should be given to Mr. John for continuing to visualize the great seaman as Jupiter Tonans flashing in gold lace.”

How delightful it is, after the arid methods of the modern critics, bred up on BENEDETTO CROCE, to hear the old authentic leonine ecstasy of SALA, “monarch of the florid quill!” Mr. Punch, once hailed by the D.T. as “the Democritus of Fleet Street,” on the strength of his “memorable monosyllabic monition,” in turn salutes the immortal protagonist of the purple polysyllable.

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WITCHCRAFT.

(A Mediaeval Tragedy.)

“I want,” said the maiden, glancing round her with tremulous distaste at the stuffed crocodile, the black cat and the cauldron simmering on the hearth, “to see some of your complexion specialities.”

“You want nothing of the kind,” retorted the witch.  “Why prevaricate?  A maid with your colour hath small need even of my triple extract of toads’ livers.  What you have really come for is either a love-potion—­” she paused and glanced keenly at her visitor—­“or the means to avenge love unrequited.”

The maiden had flushed crimson.  “I wish he were dead!” she whispered.

“Now you are talking.  That wish is, of course, the simplest thing in the world to gratify, if only you are prepared to pay for it.  I presume Moddam would not desire anything too easy?”

“He had promised,”, broke out the maiden uncontrollably, “to take me to the charity bear-baiting matinee in aid of unemployed ex-Crusaders.  The whole thing was arranged.  And then at the last moment—­”