’that deity whose identity in Greek and Roman mythology is inseparably
   connected with the over-indulgence of intoxicating liquors.’

There are prose beauties, Elethian jewels, hidden away in Baedeker’s mines of pregnant information and barren fact.  I know it is fashionable to sneer at Baedeker, especially when you are writing little rhapsodies about remoter parts of Italy, where you have found his knowledge indispensable, if exiguous.  You must always kick away the ladder when you arrive at literary distinction.  I, who am still climbing and still clinging, can afford to be more generous.  Let me, therefore, crown Baedeker with an essayist’s parsley, or an academic laurel, ere I too become selfish, forgetful, egoistical, and famous.

In Southern France, 1891 edition, p. 137, you find—­

   To the Pic de Nere, 3.75 hrs. from Luz, there and back 6.5 hrs.; a
   delightful excursion, which can be made on horseback part of the way: 
   guide 12, horse 10 fr.; adders abound.

For synthetic prose you will have to go to Tacitus to find the equal of that passage.  No more is heard of the excursion.  ’We leave Luz by the Barege road,’ the text goes on to say.  Reflections and picturesque word-painting are left for Mr. Maurice Hewlett, Mr. Arthur Symons, and Murray.

In Southern Italy, Baedeker yields to softer and more Virgilian influences.  The purple patches are longer and more frequent.  On page 99 we learn not only how to get to Baiae, but that

   Luxury and profligacy, however, soon took up their abode at Baiae, and
   the desolate ruins, which now alone encounter the eye, point the usual
   moral!

And from the preface to the same guide we obtain this remarkable advice:—­

   The traveller should adopt the Neapolitan custom of rejecting fish
   that are not quite fresh.

But it is certain educational works, popular in my childhood, that have yielded the more exotic Elethian blossoms for my Anthology.  There are passages I would not willingly let die.  In one of these books general knowledge was imparted after the manner of Magnall:  ’What is the world?  The earth on which we live.’  ‘Who was Raphael?’ ‘How is rice made?’ After such desultory interrogatives, without any warning, came Question 15:  ’Give the character of Prince Potemki’:—­

Sordidly mean, ostentatiously prodigal, filthily intemperate and affectedly refined.  Disgustingly licentious and extravagantly superstitious, a brute in appetite, vigorous though vacillating in action.

Until I went to the University, a great many years afterwards, I never learnt who Potemki was.  At the age of seven he stood to me for what ‘Timberio’ still is for Capriote children.  My teacher obviously did not know.  She always evaded my inquiries by saying, ’You will know when you are older, darling.’  Suspecting her ignorance, I became