Maxims of prudence.

or an idle man

Consult a small man or a fussy man, if collaborate per force
with such. With a large man or a busy man, consult as
little as possible. present the fait accompli. He will prefer
an error on your part to a waste of his own time or sign
that you can not make a decision

Am I yet old enough, or have I yet known
even this long enough to advise juniours even in so limited a
domain.

Has Eliot or have I wasted the greater number of hours
and/or humouring them
he by attending to feels, and I by alienating imbeciles suddenly?

The Etchells-Macdonals reprint of Dr Jonson's *L'élève London* is a manifesto of civilization. Mr Eliot's preface is full of urbanity. My own slap-dash is eminently *frélaté* rebuked.

" To be original with the *minimum* ( for once italic'd ) of alteration, is sometimes more distinguished than to be original with the *maximum* ( italics his ) of alteration. "

This was Anatole France's conscious prof process raised into a system. If I remember rightly Arthur Symons said a finer thing when he praised Whistler for that he "saught neither to follow a model nor to avoid one."

See nations slowly wise, and meanly just

To buried merit raise the tardy bust.

......

Where wasted nations raise a single name

And *décédé* mortgag'd states their grandsires wreathes

regret

From age to age in everlasting debt.

One wonders at the first passage why The Vanity of Human Wishes is a rare reprint, and why Gautier name stirs a glow brighter than Johnson's among lovers of poetry. ( Even if one have knocked about and read Bernard or enough forgotten 18th century french verse to know how much of Gautier did not need to be new coined ).

I offer two comments, one that I have used long and always with diffidence; The bust outlasts the throne The coin Tiberius, is the positive ( the poetic, the making