there--oh when? in what year?' he appealed to me.

I said it might have been six, seven, eight years ago. Swinburne knew
for certain that no copy had been there twelve years ago, and was
surprised that he had not heard of the acquisition. `They might have
told me,' he wailed.

I sacrificed myself on the altar of sympathy. I admitted that I might
have been mistaken--must have been--must have confused this play with
some other. I dipped into the pages and `No,' I shouted, `this I have
never read.'

His equanimity was restored. He was up the ladder and down again,
showing me further treasures with all pride and ardour. At length,
Watts-Dunton, afraid that his old friend would tire himself, arose
from his corner, and presently he and I went downstairs to the dining-
room. It was in the course of our session together that there suddenly
flashed across my mind the existence of a play called `The Country
Wife,' by--wasn't it Wycherley? I had once read it--or read something
about it.... But this matter I kept to myself. I thought I had
appeared fool enough already.

I loved those sessions in that Tupperossettine dining-room, lair of
solid old comfort and fervid old romanticism. Its odd duality befitted
well its owner. The distinguished critic and poet, Rossetti's closest
friend and Swinburne's, had been, for a while, in the dark ages, a
solicitor; and one felt he had been a good one. His frock-coat, though
the Muses had crumpled it, inspired confidence in his judgment of
other things than verse. But let there be no mistake. He was no mere
bourgeois parnassien, as his enemies insinuated. No doubt he had been