There was Henry Yorke and there was Henry Green-two friends in one. The former was a man of business and an engineer who had 'served his time': the latter, for the everlastingly mysterious reason of artistic genius, was one of the most delicate of the novelists who became known in the 30's, a spirit of poetry, fantasy and often wild laughter, an original whose gifts have been admired not only in this country but in Europe and America. This is the Henry whom all who care for English literature, mourn but above all celebrate for what his genius gave to us. Of the man himself-he was handsome, charming, with a gift for extravagant wit and humour, for seeing the bizarre side of bad news: a strange mixture of dash and melancholy. I remember him also as one who was drawn by passionate feeling for children and young people. Like all the talented young men and women of the 30's he was vividly conscious of living on the edge of a precipice. 'Swear to tell me,' he once said to me with eager laughter about some ceremony, 'everything that goes wrong.' I must say that the unlikely conjunction of the engineer and the poet made Henry mysterious to other writers, as we tried to relate nuts, bolts, boilers, sprockets and contracts with his zeal for literary experiment, for symbols and images. Of course, he was a craftsman. But I suspect he felt himself to be mysterious. He was a rare being and he was sensitive to that core of rarity which is buried in people who outwardly might be commonplace. He felt that they, like himself, were living in