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inspiration of first thoughts." In some ways he was more typically a French than an English poet and his description of the Parnassians in the Preface to The Golden Journey to Samarkand applies to himself almost exactly. Like them he loathed romantic egoism and aimed at "a beauty somewhat statuesque"; like them he had a fine sense of language, using words and epithets with the nicest scholarship and taste; and again like them he derived his inspiration from the Classics, from History, from Mythology, from beautiful names, from places and indeed from anything rather than from life. It was hardly ever life—either in its "ordinariness" or in its strangeness—which Flecker succeeded in transmuting into poetry. His work is an escape from life rather than an interpretation of it. And here and there, at his less-inspired moments, one feels that it is only its technical brilliance which saves it from having too limiting a flavour of "Oxford College." His poetry is usually rather cold, and it cannot be claimed for Flecker that he was remarkable for originality of thought; his emotional range is limited and his greatest strength lies in his power to create pictures compact, clear in outline, and rich in colour; and in the haunting music of which he had the secret. Emaux et Camées would not have made a bad alternative title for his collected work; and there are times when he strikes one as being an artificer with imagination, or rather when his art seems to resemble that of the jeweller or worker in precious metals. His poems although limited in their range and seldom rising to the highest imaginative level are yet hammered and worked till they attain a hard, indestructible perfection. It is difficult to believe that work of such a kind will be quickly forgotten, for it seems to possess all the qualities which make for permanence.

Flecker's poetry depends on nothing transitory for its interest; it contains no "message" to grow stale; and the extraordinary amount of work put into his verses gives them an impressive solidity. It must always be remembered of Flecker that in an age of anarchy in verse he took the trouble to become a master of technique; in an age of formlessness he upheld the finest traditions of form. What was beautiful two thousand years ago is beautiful still; and, as Flecker has told us himself, it was with the single object of creating beauty that his poems were written. Who can read them and imagine for a moment that he failed in his object? One cannot think that the glowing visions which his poems bring before the mind will prove