the phantom after the events I have described. He regards it as a good
instance of _bypsychic duality_--the fortuitous phenomenon by which
spirits are often uncertain as to whom they really represent. But I am
only an art critic, not a physicist.'

_To_ HERBERT HORNE, ESQ.




THE ELEVENTH MUSE.


In the closing years of the last century I held the position of a
publisher's hack. Having failed in everything except sculpture, I became
publisher's reader and adviser. It was the age of the 'dicky dongs,'
and, of course, I advised chiefly the publication of deciduous
literature, or books which dealt with the history of decay. The
business, unfortunately, closed before my plans were materialised; but
there was a really brilliant series of works prepared for an ungrateful
public. A cheap and abridged edition of Gibbon was to have heralded the
'Ruined Home' Library, as we only dealt with the decline and fall of
things, and eschewed Motley in both senses of the word. 'Bad Taste in
All Ages' (twelve volumes edited by myself) would have rivalled some of
Mr. Sidney Lee's monumental undertakings. It was a memory of these
unfulfilled designs which has turned my thoughts to an old notebook--the
skeleton of what was destined never to be a book in being.

I have often wondered why no one has ever tried to form an anthology of
bad poetry. It would, of course, be easy enough to get together a dreary