The Lord Mayor on Saturday gave a banquet at the
Mansion House to " representatives of Literature," rather oddly selected, for Lord Lytton answered for poetry, Mr. Justin M'Carthy for history, Lord Sherbrooke for journalism, and Dr. W. Smith, the Classical-Dictionary man, for classical literature. We have commented on Lord Sherbrooke's speech elsewhere, and Lord Lytton actually talked about the obligation which poetry owed to the genius of commerce, for increasing the consumption of poetic works. Shakespeare was a man of business, and there is no reason to believe that commerce and poetry are incompatible, for though Carthage produced nothing, Athens did, but that notion of commerce forcing poetry like pineapples is worthy of a Lord Mayor's dinner. The City is rich enough ; why not buy us a Homer, or offer a prize for a new Zscliylus ?
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