The Glass of Supreme Moments is, perhaps, needlessly enigmatical, and Rural Simplicity, Concealed Art, and Two Poets, strike one as superfluously “unpleasant.”  Mr. PAIN seems slightly touched with the current literary fad for making bricks with the smallest possible quantity of straw.  One halfpennyworth of the bread of incident to an intolerable deal of the sack of strained style and pessimist commentary, make poorish imaginative pabulum, though there seems an increasing appetite for it amongst those who, unlike Lucas Morne in The Glass of Supreme Moments, plume themselves upon possession of “the finer perceptions.” The Magic Morning is a “scrap” elaborately sauced and garnished; the fleeting flavour may possess a certain sub-acid piquancy, but such small dishes of broken meats are hardly nourishing or wholesome.

Mr. PAIN has a delicate fancy and a graceful style, a bitter-sweet humour, and a plentiful endowment of “the finer perceptions.”  He has done some good work here, and will do better—­when he finds his subject, and loses his affectations.  Read White Nights, again says the Baron’s “retainer.”

BARON DE BOOK-WORMS & Co.

* * * * *

COMING BARONETCY TO BE MUSICALLY NOTED.—­Song for a “Lullaby” or a “Good Knight” from Don Giovanni, and dedicated by nobody’s permission to Sir ARTHUR SEYMOUR SULLIVAN, would be “Barty!  Barty!” Will Sir EDWARD SOLOMON be in it?  Probably this is “another night.”

* * * * *

LAYS OF MODERN HOME.

NO.  V.—­BUTLERLESS.

[Illustration:  (Butler.)]

  Oh! bring my Butler back to me;
    I stray and lapse alone! 
  If this be freedom, to be free
    Were something best unknown. 
  He used to look so grand and grave—­
    So sad when I was slack;
  ’Twas difficult to misbehave—­
    Oh, bring my Butler back!

  In him was nothing flash nor green—­
    A Seneschal confessed;
  Most people deemed his reverend mien
    Some family bequest. 
  And yet but three short, happy years
    Had seen him on our tack,
  And made us verge on VERE DE VERES—­
    Oh, bring my Butler back!

  A Pedigree in swallow-tails,
    He gave our household “tone.” 
  My soul plebeian trips and fails
    (See stanza first) alone. 
  I fall on low Bohemian ways,
    I doff my evening black;
  I dine in blazer all ablaze—­
    Oh, bring my Butler back!

  I breakfast now and smoke in bed;
    I wrench the bell for coals;
  No master-hand and master-head
    The day’s routine controls. 
  No stately form in homage curved,
    Our commissariat’s lack,
  Veneers with, “Dinner, Sir, is served”—­
    Oh, bring my Butler back!

  A few old friends drop in at times,
    But ah! their zest is gone;
  No organ voice with awe sublimes
    BROWN, JONES, and ROBINSON. 
  They sound to me quite commonplace,
    Who seemed a ducal pack: 
  ’Twas he who lent them rank and race—­
    Oh, bring my Butler back!