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We feel an exquisite sense of pity, so impersonal as to be almost healing, as if our own sympathy had somehow set right the wrongs of the play. And this play, translated with delicate fidelity by Mr. Mackail, has been acted again by Mrs. Patrick Campbell and Mr.

In the twentieth century, critics like Mackail and A. C. Bradley and Rhys, poets like Newbolt and Drinkwater and Masefield to say nothing of living poets and critics among our own countrymen have spoken out for poetry with a knowledge, a sympathy and an eloquence unsurpassed in any previous epoch. The direct "Defence of Poetry" may safely be left to such men as these.

Carcopino has just astonished us with proof of the poet's minute study of topographical details in the region of Lavinium and Ostia, Mackail has vindicated his care as an antiquarian, Warde Fowler has repeatedly pointed out his scrupulous accuracy in portraying religious rites, and now Sergeaunt, in a study of his botany, has emphasized his habit of making careful observations in that domain.

JOHN WILLIAM MACKAIL, Professor of Poetry at Oxford University, author and editor of many volumes dealing with ancient Greek and Roman literature. JOHN MASEFIELD, known chiefly for his long poems of life among the British poor. ALFRED EDWARD WOODLEY MASON, writer of romantic novels, of which "The Four Feathers" and "The Turnstile" are perhaps the best known, and of several popular dramas.

In these fine sentences it will be seen that Mr. Mackail makes a very high and majestic claim indeed for poetry: no less than the claim of art, chivalry, patriotism, love, and religion all rolled into one!

"Men called it rash, perhaps it was crime: Their deed flashed out God's will, an hour before the time." A few years afterwards, the nations of England and Scotland endorsed the action of Richard Cameron and his compatriots. The blood of Guthrie, and Cargill, and MacKail had cried for vengeance, and the God of the Covenanters hurled the Stuart dynasty from the throne.

No one speaks of him except in terms of affection and esteem. He used his wealth liberally, supporting his parents generously, and his father, who became blind in his old age, lived long enough to hear of his son's fame and feel the effects of his prosperity. By J. W. MACKAIL

Mackail makes quite clear is whether he means by poetry the expression in verse of all these great ideas, or whether he means a spirit much larger and mightier than what is commonly called poetry; which indeed only appears in verse at a single glowing point, as the electric spark leaps bright and hot between the coils of dark and cold wire.

"The executioner favoured Mr Mackail," says the Rev. Mr Kirkton, himself a sufferer later. This Mr Mackail, when a lad of twenty-one , had already denounced the rulers, in a sermon, as on the moral level of Haman and Judas. If any one concealed his letter, it was Burnet, Archbishop of Glasgow.

'I can report nothing but good of the land, said Joshua Redivivus, as he sent back such clusters of its vineyards and such pots of its honey to Hugh Mackail, to Marion M'Naught, and to Lady Kenmure.