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of either English or American men of letters, and that not three per cent. of our newspapers would ever have admitted the bulk of his poetry even to their "side columns."

To the scholars, who, surfeited on the riches of Parnassus, have wandered into the sterile fields of "higher criticism" and imagine great beauties in the poetic effusions herein reviewed, we simply say nature has endowed you-with a good education! and you have a right, whether it need be, to go in useless research into unfrequented ways to show your learning.

To those whom the former have trained to "distinguish hands", as in a painting, and who agree with them that the master poet of all times lives among us to-day and whom you behold painted in words that almost breathe in verse, we kindly say Macaulay has consented to tender you our sympathy, as you may learn further on.

If, reader, you find in so small a volume, that we have too frequently or too awkwardly quoted from some rightly distinguished for "massive deeds and great, some" for "their ornaments of rhyme", remember we are literally a "man with the hoe", and, speaking figuratively, shall account ourself fortunate in the utility of our task if only we can hoe out a few of the noxious weeds threatening

a Puritan literature, in the due performance of which we have confessedly often betrayed the mistakes of the neophyte.

In much of what we have even briefly attempted and imperfectly executed we know that we have been treading on dangerous grounds, for those who pay willing homage to our most famous detractor, however praiseworthy their motives, are quite sure to scathe those who criticise even this most virulent critic, for an attempt to break the spell of a cherished delusion, or trace to "common clay" the origin of their object of deification. Nevertheless we anticipate our greatest regret ever to be that we must send forth so humble a servant on so exalted a mission.

Portland, Oregon, Jan. 31, 1900.

W. J. P.

ciscans through his description of a street en-
counter-His celebrated salmon fishing on the
Clackamas-Men that Rudyard claims he saw
on this trip-Men he did not see-Thinks our na-
tion "temptingly spankable."-Charles Dickens
on the Briton's "insolent conceit and cool as-
sumption of superiority.”—Rudyard lampoons our
ministry-Patterns somewhat after Dickens in
some of his reflections-Makes the newspaper re-
porter the scapegoat for the sins of the Ameri-
can Press-Dickens' anathema against our Press
-Striking contrast-Why Kipling should never
have written his "American Notes."

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