Austin Dobson is today, as he has been for years, one of the leading English critics and writers of light verse. He is an authority on the literature and society of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, and he excels in verse of the sort here printed.

Chicken-skin, delicate, white,
Painted by Carlo Vanloo,
Loves in a riot of light
Roses and vaporous blue;
Hark to the dainty frou-frou!
Picture above, if you can,
Eyes that could melt as the dew—
This was the Pompadour’s fan

See how they rise at the sight,
Thronging the Oeil de Boeuf through;
Courtiers as butterflies bright,
Beauties that Fragonard drew,
Talon-rouge, falbala, queue,
Cardinal, Duke—to a man,
Eager to sigh or to sue—
This was the Pompadour’s fan!

Ah, but things more than polite
Hung on this toy, voyez-vous!
Matters of state and of might,
Things that great ministers do;
Things that, may be, overthrew
Those in whose brains they began;
Here was the sigh and the cue—
This was the Pompadour’s fan!

ENVOY

Where are the secrets it knew?
Weavings of plot and of plan?
But where is the Pompadour, too?
This was the Pompadour’s fan!