21 DECEMBER 1991, page 75

Leaping Over Death

William Scammell W e poets in our youth begin in glad- ness, But thereof comes in the end despondency and madness', said Wordsworth. And serve you right, too, mutters the rest......

. . . But Personally I Prefer Reading

Christopher Hawtree THE RISE AND FALL OF THE MAN OF LE IThRS by John Gross Penguin, f7.99, pp. 361 h e man of letters never really dis- appeared. He was only resting, in those......