Now this kind of facility no doubt carries danger with it. But when it leads any one to suspect its possessor of necessarily lacking real poetic intensity, then he should make himself critically sure that he is not deceived. Because poetry is sometimes a light, it is not even then, and much less at other times, incapable of being a holy thing. It has been said that there are passages, specially one passage, in 'Helen of Troy' that are poetry sans phrase; and that 'Hesperothen,' though to a certain extent school-work, is of that class of schoolwork which gives us Luinis in addition to Lionardos, not by any means in mere plagiarism of them. But there are some of the smaller poems which seem to the present reviewer to be as 'intense' as any one can desire. The best known things that Lang ever did the sonnets on Homer and on the 'Odyssey'-are undoubtedly great and intense enough in all conscience; but to some his greatest and most intense thing has always seemed to be that on 'Colonel Burnaby,' which actually lives up to its text, one of the greatest things in Homer himself. σὺ δ ̓ ἐν στροφάλιγγι κονίης κείσο μέγας μεγαλωστὶ, λελασμένος ἱπποσυνάων, 'Thou that on every field of earth or sky Didst hunt for Death, who seemed to flee and fear, How great and greatly fallen dost thou lie, Slain in the desert by some wandering spear, Not here, alas!' may England say, 'not here'; To thunder through the Afghan passes sheer 'Like Aias by the ships thou shouldst have stood, The smitten eagle scattered from the field.' There is, of course, a hopeless kind of person who will say, 'Oh! but you know all that fear of Russia was nonsense.' It would be quite useless to point out to him that it is the animus, not the cœlum, that we are talking about. There have been plenty of circumstances since which would have given, and have given, men like Burnaby a suitable scene for their end, and a suitable subject for majestic poetry. But the real question is as always not 'Who is the man?' 'What is the scene?' 'What are the circumstances?' but 'How are the man and the scene and the circumstances treated?' Now it may be fearlessly contended that they are here treated not only well but greatly. Here is the real, the so much talked of, the so rarely found 'grand style.' In an old phrase itself great not o[one] word does it fail.' It is not only perfect verse, but it is great poetry. 'Yes,' somebody may say, 'it is poetry, if not so great as you think it: but Death and War are the easiest subjects for all poetry, especially when combined.' Well, here is another where there is no war, only complete peace, and where if death is in any way connected with the subject, it is not the subject itself. It also is, or ought to be, well known, but in an examination the examiner is not absolutely bound to pay no attention to the best answers. BALLADE OF HIS CHOICE OF A SEPULCHRE. 'Here I'd come when weariest! Of the Windburg's tufted over Where the wide-winged hawk doth hover. 'Silent here are lark and plover; In the cover Deep below the cushat best Loves his mate, and croons above her O'er their nest, Where the wide-winged hawk doth hover. 'Bring me here, life's tired-out guest, To the blest Bed that waits the weary rover, Ends my quest Where the wide-winged hawk doth hover. Possibly this word may have started or helped, with too literal readers, the delusion above noticed as to Lang's being a "disappointed man.' But all fail and who succeeds?'-at least as he would fain have succeeded? ENVOY. 'Friend, or stranger kind, or lover, Ah! fulfil a last behest, Let me rest more Where the wide-winged hawk doth hover!' That, perhaps, is not so faultless as the Burnaby sonnet, the greater cramp of the form tempting to, if it does not actually compel, clichés and chevilles. and short lines is a great improvement on the uniformity of line length, more usual in the ballade; and (as is to a curious extent the case with many if not most of Lang's experiments in these dainty but dangerous measures) hardly thinks of the rules at all, till the Envoy reminds one of them. But the perfection of this piece-for it also is perfect in its own way-lies in the mastery and the amplitude with which it provides not merely scene, colour, music, and thought (dianoia), but that most elusive thing, atmosphere, to surround, pervade, and surmount the whole. Even the greatest poets cannot, or at least do not, give us this atmosphere always; and it is, probable, from numerous observations one remembers, that some critics of great reputation have not been conscious of it. But it is certain that any one who can give it is, for the time and to the extent of his giving, a poet; and that any one who cannot recognise it is, for the time and to the extent of his unconsciousness, not a critic. Perhaps Lang's claims to be a poet-it ought to be remembered that he never claimed the title but put himself forward only as a writer of verses are seldom advanced in so concentrated a manner as in these two pieces, though the very beautiful Ballade of a Dream' the other two; as perhaps it ought to be to accommodate may be leashed with them. It is less perspicuous than itself to the nature of dreams, but it has a peculiar charm. And once more the formality of the measure which always militates more or less against these forms in English, escapes attention curiously till the 'Envoy' picks that attention up. One may be rather fond of them in French from Lescurel to Banville, and in English from Chaucer to Henley, and yet think that, except for comic 1 comic effect, they are better without the Envoy. Here the whole follows: THE DREAM. 'Swift as sound of music fled 'Like the scent from roses red, 'Could some spell, or sung or said, I would lie like him who lies Where the lights on Latmos gleam Wake not, find not Paradise ENVOY. 'Sleep that giv'st what Life denies, Except the obvious reminiscence of the 'Witch of Atlas' in the most general way ('some kindly witch and wise') there is nothing there that reminds one of any special utterance of Shelley's; and yet there is a sort of aura of Shelley all over it. Now the poets who can communicate even the faintest aura of Shelley are not frequently to be met with either on the stately bookshelf or in the fourpenny box. It would probably not have discontented Mr Lang Vol. 240.-No. 477. T himself if one had told him that though he could put in diploma-pieces like these, they were not what might be called the proceeds of his special function in the court of Apollo. That function, discharged with extraordinary if not quite unique success, was the treatment of the most various-if one may employ a scholastic term-the most quodlibetal subjects 'in a poetical way',-to borrow from Hazlitt as we have just borrowed from the Schools. This quodlibetality, with the poetical quality conjoined, is a very rare thing indeed. Except the eternal exceptionShakespeare-the very greatest poets have very rarely known it. Aristophanes and Catullus are about the only ones among the ancients who occur to one as having the power if they had chosen to exercise it. Browning among the moderns has been thought to have it, but perhaps mistakenly; you will find that, numerous as his subjects are individually, they have strong classresemblances; imagine him on a cricket match. As for the great ones who have not judiciously avoided, remember Milton on the guns and Tennyson on skippingropes and darling little rooms. On the other hand, the distinctly minor' poet has not the poetry to infuse; he is merely trivial. Now Lang could apply his own sauce to nearly everything, and that own sauce always had some poetry in it. Sometimes it might be only what the analysts call a trace'; oftener it was an 'a increasingly appreciable quantity; not seldom the unerring judgment of the elder Mr Weller would have pronounced the blend as least 'ekal'-poetry and mere subject balancing each other and completing each other like spirit and water, or if anybody prefers it spirit and flesh. It is the advantage of Mrs Lang's arrangementcounterbalancing to no small extent any objections to be taken to it-that it brings out this extraordinary faculty of poetical treatment if anything rather better than any other could. The four volumes give you in fact one long phantas magoria set to music from the already mentioned 'pictures' of Oxford and St Andrews with which we began to 'The Poet's Apology,' a thing to be much commended to any one who does not understand that poet and wants to do so. The picture (not part of the overture) of 'St Andrews Bay at Night'; the 'poems of |