the old ones and found them nil.  You know my nomadic and restless disposition ... perhaps there is something of the Greek gipsy about me—­a craving for constant change of scene and surroundings,—­however, as my absence from you and England is likely to be somewhat prolonged, I send you in the mean time a Poem—­there!  ’Season your admiration for a while,’ and hear me out patiently.  I am perfectly aware of all you would say concerning the utter folly and uselessness of writing poetry at all in this present age of milk-and-watery-literature, shilling sensationals, and lascivious society dramas,—­and I have a very keen recollection too of the way in which my last book was maltreated by the entire press—­good heavens! how the critics yelped like dogs about my heels, snapping, sniffing, and snarling!  I could have wept then like the sensitive fool I was. ...  I can laugh now!  In brief, my friend—­for you are my friend and the best of all possible good fellows—­I have made up my mind to conquer those that have risen against me—­to break through the ranks of pedantic and pre-conceived opinions—­and to climb the heights of fame, regardless of the little popular pipers of tame verso that obstruct my path and blow their tin whistles in the public ears to drown, if possible, my song.  I will be heard! ... and to this end I pin my faith on the work I now transmit to your care.  Have it published immediately and in the best style—­I will cover all expenses.  Advertise sufficiently, yet with becoming modesty, for ‘puffery’ is a thing I heartily despise,—­and were the whole press to turn round and applaud me as much as it has hitherto abused and ridiculed me, I would not have one of its penny lines of condescendingly ignorant approval quoted in connection with what must be a perfectly unostentatious and simple announcement of this new production from my pen.  The manuscript is exceptionally clear, even for me who do not as a male write a very bad scrawl—­so that you can scarcely have much bother with the proof-correcting—­though even were this the case, and the printers turned out to be incorrigible blockheads and blunderers, I know you would grudge neither time nor trouble expended in my service.  Good Frank Villiers! how much I owe you!—­and yet I willingly incur another debt of gratitude by placing this matter in your hands, and am content to borrow more of your friendship, but only believe me, in order to repay it again with the truest interest!  By the way, do you remember when we visited the last Paris Salon together, how fascinated we were by one picture—­the head of a monk whose eyes looked out like a veritable illumination from under the folds of a drooping white cowl? ... and on referring to our catalogues we found it described as the portrait of one ‘Heliobas,’ an Eastern mystic, a psychist formerly well known in Paris, but since retired into monastic life?  Well!  I have discovered him here; he is apparently the Superior or chief of this Order—­though what Order