Caldecott, with which it has much in common; but Mr Dobson's humour is
not so "rollicking," his portraiture not so broad, as that of the
illustrator of "John Gilpin." The appeal is rather to the intellect, and
the touches of subdued pathos in the "Gentleman" and "Gentlewoman of the
Old School" are addressed directly to the heart. We are in the 18th
century, but see it through the glasses of to-day; and the soft
intercepting sense of change which hangs like a haze between ourselves
and the subject is altogether due to the poet's sympathy and
sensibility. _At the Sign of the Lyre_ (1885) was the next of Mr
Dobson's separate volumes of verse, although he has added to the body of
his work in a volume of _Collected Poems_ (1897). _At the Sign of the
Lyre_ contains examples of all his various moods. The admirably fresh
and breezy "Ladies of St James's" has precisely the qualities we have
traced in his other 18th-century poems; there are ballades and rondeaus,
with all the earlier charm; and in "A Revolutionary Relic," as in "The
Child Musician" of the _Old-World Idylls_, the poet reaches a depth of
true pathos which he does not often attempt, but in which, when he seeks
it, he never fails. At the pole opposite to these are the light
occasional verses, not untouched by the influence of Praed, but also
quite individual, buoyant and happy. But the chief novelty in _At the
Sign of the Lyre_ was the series of "Fables of Literature and Art,"
founded in manner upon Gay, and exquisitely finished in scholarship,
taste and criticism. It is in these perhaps, more than in any other of
his poems, that we see how with much felicity Mr Dobson interpenetrates
the literature of fancy with the literature of judgment. After 1885 Mr
Dobson was engaged principally upon critical and biographical prose, by
which he has added very greatly to the general knowledge of his
favourite 18th century. His biographies of _Fielding_ (1883), _Bewick_
(1884), _Steele_ (1886), _Goldsmith_ (1888), _Walpole_ (1890) and
_Hogarth_ (1879-1898) are studies marked alike by assiduous research,
sympathetic presentation and sound criticism. It is particularly
noticeable that Mr Dobson in his prose has always added something, and
often a great deal, to our positive knowledge of the subject in
question, his work as a critic never being solely aesthetic. In _Four
Frenchwomen_ (1890), in the three series of _Eighteenth-Century
Vignettes_ (1892-1894-1896), and in _The Paladin of