Page:In the dozy hours, and other papers.djvu/170

 156 Louis Stevenson's poetry, and on Mr. Rudyard Kipling's prose. These papers, discriminating, sympathetic, and exhaustive, are called pastels. They do not differ in any way from other critical studies of equal length and merit. They abound in agreeable quotations, and show a clear and genial appreciation of their themes. They are simply reviews of an unusually good order, and if their title be correctly applied, then it is serviceable for any piece of literary criticism which deals with a single author. Macaulay's "Madame D'Arblay," Mr. Birrell's "Emerson," Mr. Saintsbury's "Peacock," might all have been named pastels.

By this time the subject begins to grow perplexing. Miss Wilkins wanders far from her true gods, and from the sources of her genuine inspiration, to write a handful of labored sketches—pen pictures perhaps, albeit a trifle stiff in execution—which she calls pastels. Mr, Brander Matthews gives us, as his contribution to the puzzle, a vivid description of Carmencita dancing in a New York studio, and calls it a pastel. If we stray from prose to verse, we are tripped up at every step. Nebulous little couplets, songs of saddening subtlety,