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for the Times," "Raleigh, his Life and Death," and "Cithara," the very names are by this time forgotten. Of "Proverbial Philosophy" itself there are few enough copies in demand to-day, and it is difficult for us to place ourselves in the position of those who felt its charm. What to the early Victorian Era was counted for wisdom, and piety, and even for beauty, counts to the present age for mere commonplace verbiage. Tupper's name has taken a place in our language as the contemptuous synonym for a poetaster. "Festus," on the other hand, although not read to-day, has always commanded respectful attention. Its author, Philip James Bailey1816-, wrote "Festus" in its first form, at the age of twenty, and it was published in 1839. The book was enlarged again and again, till it reached to three times its original length. It may be that this enlargement has had something to do with its fate. "Festus" was frequently compared to the best work of Goethe and of Mr Browning. Even a more pronounced recognition accrued to the dramatic poems of Sir Henry Taylor1800-1886, and more particularly to "Philip Van Artevelde" (1834), which was described by the Quarterly Review as "the noblest effort in the true old taste of our English historical drama, that has been made for more than a century," and which attracted the keenest attention of all Sir Henry Taylor's contemporaries. His entertaining "Autobiography" has told us that Taylor, who was an important official at the Colonial Office, knew all the famous men of his time.

      Women have occupied no small share in the literary history of the past sixty years, although it is in fiction that their most enduring triumphs have been secured. The most popular women poets, next in order to Mrs Browning, have been Eliza Cook and Jean Ingelow. Eliza Cook1818-1889 wrote for the most part the kind of verses which would now be rejected by the editor of the Poet's Corner of a provincial newspaper. She would be little more than a vague memory, were it not for "The Old Arm-Chair"; but she has other claims to consideration. In the forties and the fifties Eliza Cook's Journal was one of the most prominent publications of the day, and it did much for the cause of literature and philanthropy. Jean Ingelow1820-1897 survived, as did Eliza Cook, to see her verse well-nigh forgotten, and yet it is stated that two hundred thousand copies of her poems have been sold in America alone. Miss Ingelow, who was born in Boston, Lincolnshire, and died in London, will live in anthologies by her ballad, "High Tide on the Coast of Lincolnshire," by a song in "Supper at the Mill," and by sundry short poems.

      A certain brighter and more humorous kind of verse had its beginnings with Thomas Hood and the author of "The Ingoldsby Legends." Thomas Hood1798-1845 has endeared himself to the whole reading world by his "Song of the Shirt" (1844); and his "Dream of Eugene Aram" (1829) is not less familiar. But in addition to this he had an abundance of wit and drollery side by side with pathos and tenderness, which will always make a splendid tradition and a great inspiration. Hood was a journalist. His prototype, Richard Harris Barham1788-1845, was an Anglican clergyman. His pseudonym of Thomas Ingoldsby calls up memories of some of the quaintest and drollest verse ever written. "The Ingoldsby Legends" were first contributed to Bentley's Miscellany, and afterwards collected in volumes. "The Jackdaw of Rheims" is the most popular. Barham's once successful novel, "My Cousin Nicholas," is now all but forgotten.

      The most famous successors of Hood and Barham have been Calverley and Mr Austin Dobson. Charles Stuart Calverley1831-1884 wrote "Fly Leaves" and "Verses and Translations." Mr Dobson has published, in addition to many valuable prose works, the exquisite "Vignettes in Rhyme" and "Proverbs in Porcelain," which, with Mr Andrew Lang's "Ballades in Blue China," form a dainty contribution to the lighter literature of the epoch.

      A determination to say as little as possible concerning writers still young in years, though already famous, will make, it may be, my summary of Victorian poetry seem inadequate to many. Mr Traill, a discerning critic, has specified some hundred or more "minor poets" who flourish to-day! But it cannot be doubted that the minor poet of our era, with his excellent technique, his deep feeling, and his high-minded impulsiveness, is separated by an immense gulf from the minor poet of an earlier period. The Pyes and the Hayleys, who were famous in an age when criticism was less of an art, had little enough of the real poetical faculty. That faculty can scarcely be denied to the hundred or more of living bards who now claim the suffrages of the poetry-loving reader. It cannot be denied also to many men who have passed away during the present era—to Alexander Smith and Sydney Dobell in one period, and to Coventry Patmore and James Thomson in another. Alexander Smith1830-1867 was an industrious essayist as well as a poet. Tennyson and Mrs Browning concurred in their esteem of Smith as a poet "whose works show fancy, and not imagination"; and this might with truth be said of too many of the minor bards, and, indeed, constitutes the dividing line. Sydney Yendys, under which pseudonym Sydney Dobell1824-1874 co-operated with Smith in "Sonnets on the War" (1855), was a poet of similar temperament.

      Coventry Patmore1823-1896 is known to the many through his "Angel in the House," a poem upon domestic bliss which breathed a note not always sincere, but to which Mr Ruskin assured a certain popularity through effective quotation in his "Sesame and Lilies." A certain ecstatic band of admirers attached more importance to Patmore's "Unknown Eros." These admirers spoilt him by adulation. He probably looked forward with the same keen assurance to the verdict of posterity as did Southey; and posterity it is all but certain will be as ruthless in the one case as in the other.

      Patmore's life was one of luxury and independence. Quite the reverse was the fate of James Thomson1834-1882, whose great poem, "The City of Dreadful Night," was published in Mr Charles Bradlaugh's National Reformer in 1874, and not republished as a book until 1880. Thomson had a melancholy career which ended in drink and disaster. He died in University Hospital, London. His "City of Dreadful Night" is peculiarly a reflection of the age that is passing. It secured even during the poet's life the commendation of George Eliot, of George Meredith, and of other critics; and it may yet command a large audience, who breathe the note of pessimism which was always characteristic of the writer:—

      "The sense that every struggle brings defeat

      Because Fate holds no prize to crown success,

      That all the oracles are dumb or cheat

      Because they have no secret to express;

      That none can pierce the vast black veil uncertain

      Because there is no light beyond the curtain;

      That all is vanity and nothingness."

      

      A poet whom one names with peculiar reverence is Thomas Aubrey de Vere1814-, the son of Sir Aubrey de Vere, who was also a poet. Aubrey de Vere, the younger, knew and loved Wordsworth, to whom in 1842 he dedicated "The Waldenses: A Lyrical Tale," and yet retains, sixty years later, the most sympathetic interest in modern literary effort. Mr de Vere is an Irishman, and was educated at Trinity College, Dublin. He has written many volumes of poetry and prose, his dramatic poems "Alexander the Great" and "St Thomas of Canterbury" having, no doubt, been largely inspired by the successes of his friend and relative, Sir Henry Taylor, and by his father's brilliant drama, "Mary Tudor." One of his most recent books was a volume of critical essays containing a notable study of Wordsworth.

      Irishmen have been fairly conspicuous in the poetry of the epoch, and the term "Celtic Renaissance" has begun to be used hopefully by lovers of Ireland who desire that country to have a literature as distinctly Irish as Scotland has a literature definitely Scottish. Thomas Moore1779-1852 was the pioneer of this movement. He had, it is true, done all his work before the Queen came to the throne, although he lived yet another fifteen years. His "Irish Melodies" began to appear in 1807, "Lalla Rookh" was published in 1817, and the "Life of Byron" in 1830. Moore was as much an inspiration to modern Ireland as Burns to modern Scotland, and the one country holds the name of its poet as reverentially in memory as does the other. Moore, however, lacked the note of passionate sincerity which pertained to Burns; although we may fairly ask what would have been the career of Burns had he been thrown early into the literary and social life of London—the London of Byron's time.

      The influence of Moore was strong in Thomas Davis1814-1845 whose "National and Historical Ballads, Songs and Poems" caused so great

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