able but heated altercation on the merits of Milton and Defoe, or more harmoniously discussing, judging, and gossiping over the "wits" of tavern and coffee-house whom Mr. More has gathered into his latest volume: first, Beaumont and Fletcher, Halifax, Mrs. Behn, Swift, Pope, Lady Mary, Berkeley, the Duke of Wharton, Gray; and then, more summarily, those golden bugs, those "decadent" fellows who wore the green carnation and sipped absinthe for coffee between the reign of Wilde and the reign of G. B. Shaw.
It is good literary talk—better is not to be heard in these degenerate days. It is talk now grave, now gay, richly allusive and erudite and deliciously seasoned with malice—"at every word a reputation dies." For the host, quoting Samuel Butler, has given his guests this note: "There is nothing that provokes and sharpens wit like malice." What a lurking whig or a modern Democrat or a Romanticist would miss, if he were eavesdropping there, is a clash of fundamental belief and theory. Professor Trent may differ tenaciously on a nice point, such as the circumstantial evidence in the case of Lady Mary's virtue. But as to the apriori evidence they are all in substantial agreement; they accept with a dreadful Calvinistic accord man's natural predisposition to evil. They all applaud the wits for saying so sovereignly well those infamous things about human nature, which, alas, every now and then, human nature deserves to hear. They all speak sus-
