could rattle it off, for one who could recite the longer and less jingling poem. I prefer, then, to modify Mr. Stephen's statement, and recognise as the mark of the true poem, not that it "learns itself by heart," but that when once we have read it and taken it in, its ghost, its disembodied spirit, released from its verbal integuments, haunts us for ever after. To think of the Eneid, or The Faery Queen, or Paradise Lost, is to hear, in each case, a peculiar strain of harmony, entirely divorced from words. By conscious effort, indeed, we can summon up a few fragments of the different poems, but they do not make the haunting harmonies any clearer or more unmistakable to "that inward ear which is the bliss of solitude." So, too, with Ye Mariners of England and The "Revenge." Campbell's song has probably run in our head from boyhood, and will remain with us, along with other "trivial fond records," to the end of our days; but to think of Tennyson's poem is to summon up the ghost of something stately and moving and splendid, before which the actual substance of the good old ditty (of which, nevertheless, I desire to speak with respect and affection) seems to vanish into nothingness. This is simply to say, in other words, that the fundamental and imperishable quality of great poetry is style; for style is the more prosaic term for that ghostly harmony. Let us note, too-for this must be emphasised whenever a large number of contemporary poets are to be passed in review-that style can be as clearly manifested in small as in great poetry, in the versicle as in the epic. It is unmistakable, for instance, in those three stanzas of Sir Henry Wotton's which I have quoted above. They have a physiognomy, an accent, an individuality of their own. It is not entirely unsusceptible of analysis. If it were worth while, pages might be devoted to expounding the characteristics of conception, diction, metre, and stanza which give this poem its individuality; but the ultimate secret would escape us after all. Again, if all the works of Tennyson were to vanish from earth save the nine lines of Frater Ave atque Vale, a critic, coming across them, would be able to say with confidence, "Here was a true poet, a man with a miraculous accent of his own." It follows, too, from the very theory of inspiration, of the miracle, that it may occur very rarely, or only once, in a whole lifetime. A man may write only one "copy of verses," and they may proclaim him incontestably a poet. Or he may doggedly turn out his tale of fifty lines a day, with never a line worth reading, until, on a particular day of days, the inspiration comes, the miracle happens, and he writes two or three stanzas which will sing in men's souls till the end of time. Such cases, of course, are very rare, perhaps purely theoretical; but they are merely over-statements of perfectly common cases. And the principle on which this book is based is that inspiration is inspiration, style is style, even if it comes to a man only half a dozen times in as many years. All poets live by their happy moments; but we are apt, in looking at the past, to lose our sense of perspective, and forget or ignore the proportion of uninspired to inspired writing in the works of all but the very greatest; thus doing injustice to the contemporaries whom we see from a different angle. The classics come to us foreshortened, like a fleet of great galleons bearing down on us from the horizon, the sunlight of renown on each high-piled tower of canvas, and the pennant of immortality floating from every mainmast-head. Whatever the errors, oversights, or limitations of the criticism contained in the following pages, I cannot but feel that it has been my privilege to bring together, in my quotations and selections, a very remarkable body of poetry. I have already called attention to its variety, but its strength, beauty, and general originality seem to me no less striking. If the reader will bear in mind that by far the greater number of the poems here quoted have been written within the past ten years, I think he will admit that the last decade of the nineteenth century has been anything but a barren period. For my part, I do not hesitate to express my conviction that the poetry of the eighteennineties does no discredit whatever to a century so glorious in the annals of song that even the resplendent seventeenth century will have much ado to outshine it. If I thought otherwise-if I believed in the decadence of which we hear so much-I should be sad indeed. It would show a strange and ominous change in the spirit of the nation if England ceased to utter her exultations and her agonies, her faith and hope and doubt and pride and love, in noble and vital verse. For three centuries and a quarter (not to go back to the very "morning star of song") her poetry has indeed been "the breath and finer spirit of all [her] knowledge," the supreme glory of her literature. And were she the same England, made to feel It is a purblind practicality that thinks of poetry as one of the mere decorations of life, an idle toying with baubles of speech set in scroll-works of rhythm. Poetry is actually a great force, and potentially the greatest, in the world. It has the religion of the future in its hands. What is the vital element in the religion of the present?. Not, certainly, its dogma, not its metaphysics, not even its ethics, but simply the poetry of the life, character, and utterances of its Founder, reinforced by the more magnificent but less penetrating poetry of the lyrists and rhapsodists who preceded him, and the didactic and apocalyptic poetry of his immediate successors. In like manner must the religion of the future spring from some body of poetry potent enough to give the spirit of man a new elevation and a larger outlook upon nature and destiny. The poet speaks to the imagination, and through the imagination to the will. Imagination is the greatest of spiritual forces. The frame of things is plastic to its touch, as clay in the hands of the potter. The world will be whatever the imagination of mankind decrees that the world shall be. It is the present impotence of man to imagine a peaceful and beautiful world that prevents or defers its realisation. If a poet mighty enough to overcome this impotence were to arise to-morrow, the world would be re-created in three generations. He need not have greater genius than the great poets of the past, but he must know more than they. Miracles do not happen, and even the poet requires knowledge as well as divination. But knowledge is being rapidly garnered; and when LAW is sufficiently ascertained, there will arise a great poet to absorb, co-ordinate, transfigure, and promulgate it, touched with magical persuasiveness, to the renovation of the spirit of man. In the meantime, let us cherish the habit, and perfect and keep bright the mechanism, of song. One supreme world-poet-the poet of the world-pageant-has already spoken in our English tongue. The other supreme worldpoet-the poet of love and law-must needs speak in the same tongue if he is to find, as it is essential to his calling that he should find, the largest possible audience. Let us, then, preserve and enrich for him, to the best of our power, the language and the rhythms of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Shelley and Tennyson. H. C. BEECHING THOUGH the title of Mr. H. C. Beeching's collected poems -In a Garden-refers particularly to the opening sequence, it in reality covers the whole book. An English garden is the congenial haunt of Mr. Beeching's muse. We recognise it at a glance as a parsonage garden. The French windows of the drawing-room open, under a narrow verandah festooned with clematis and jasmine, upon a deep-piled lawn of immemorial sward. A cedar in the middle of the lawn seems, in springing from the soil, to have carried whole swaths of turf with it into mid-air, so dense and velvety is the verdure of its level branches. There are flower-beds on each side, filled with old-fashioned cottage flowers: We turn'd our steps and loiter'd slow Love's banner, heartsease, balm for thought, One slim narcissus drooped his head, And from her closely curtain'd bed One lily shook out half her bells. Below the lawn, and behind an array of rose-bushes, a box hedge shuts off the vegetable garden, enclosed by walls once red, long hoar with age, on which pear and peach trees stretch their Briarean arms. The gables of modest glass-houses peer forth in this corner and that, embowered, |