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Rh left is superlatively excellent: it needs neither apology nor explanation; it simply needs to be read. That, indeed, is the prime difficulty; for the world is busy about many things, and Lionel Johnson spoke with so gentle a sweetness, so modest a serenity. In prose and verse alike, he was stranger to the jealousies and impatiences of mere ambition. Securus judicat orbis terrarum, he was fond of quoting—"sure and sound is the whole world's judgment"; and to Time, that judge so deliberate and so infallible, he committed all. It is pleasant and reassuring to remember |James Russell Lowell|Lowell's words concerning the two kinds of literary genius. "The first and highest," he tells us, "may be said to speak out of the eternal to the present, and must compel its age to understand it; the second understands its age, and tells it what it wishes to be told."

Lionel Johnson, quite obviously, was not of this latter type; but one has strong hope that his place is with the higher company.