At the annual dinner of the Royal Literary Fund on
Tuesday Lord Curzon took the chair, and in his speech dis- agreed with Lord Rosebery's dictum that poverty is a stimulus to literature. The contributions to the fund announced during the evening amounted to £3,050—a sum only twice exceeded. Lord Morley replied for "Literature " in a delightful speech. France did more honour to literature, he said, than was common here. He noticed, for example, that French battle- ships bore the names of Voltaire, Condorcet, and Diderot, while cruisers were named after Victor Hugo and Michelet. He trembled at the thought of approaching even the adventurous and open-minded First Lord of the Admiralty with a similar list. But Carlyle ' would be a splendid name for a Dread- nought. (Seriously, why not call a battleship H.M.S. Shakespeare,' and have in the "Shakespeare class" the Chaucer,' the Milton,' the Byron,' the Wordsworth," the ' Walter Scott,' and the ' Tennyson' ?) He agreed with Lord Curzon that poverty was no stimulus to literature. In
journalism he drew a distinction between the news portion of journalism and the opinions of the publicist, and he believed that the publicist was a more responsible writer than he was in the days he could remember. As for literary criticism, it was infinitely higher than it was years ago, not only in large organs of opinion, but in the cheaper kewspapers.
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