Mr. Cyprian Paynter was an American who lived in Italy. There was
a good deal more to be said about him, for he was a very acute and
cultivated gentleman; but those two facts would, perhaps, cover most
of the others. Storing his mind like a museum with the wonder
of the Old World, but all lit up as by a window with the wonder
of the New, he had fallen heir to some thing of the unique
critical position of Ruskin or Pater, and was further famous
as a discoverer of minor poets. He was a judicious discoverer,
and he did not turn all his minor poets into major prophets.
If his geese were swans, they were not all Swans of Avon. He had
even incurred the deadly suspicion of classicism by differing
from his young friends, the Punctuist Poets, when they produced
versification consisting exclusively of commas and colons.
He had a more humane sympathy with the modern flame kindled from
the embers of Celtic mythology, and it was in reality the recent
appearance of a Cornish poet, a sort of parallel to the new Irish poets,
which had brought him on this occasion to Cornwall. He was,
indeed, far too well-mannered to allow a host to guess that
any pleasure was being sought outside his own hospitality.
He had a long standing invitation from Vane, whom he had met
in Cyprus in the latter's days of undiplomatic diplomacy;
and Vane was not aware that relations had only been thus
renewed after the critic had read Merlin and Other Verses,
by a new writer named John Treherne. Nor did the Squire even begin
to realize the much more diplomatic diplomacy by which he had
been induced to invite the local bard to lunch on the very day
of the American critic's arrival.

Mr. Paynter was still standing with his gripsack, gazing in a trance