76), the
extraordinary metrical power of which won general admiration. _Poems and
Ballads_, second series, came out in 1878. _Tristram of Lyonnesse_ in
heroic couplets followed in 1882, _A Midsummer Holiday_ (1884), _Marino
Faliero_ (1885), _Locrine_ (1887), _Poems and Ballads_, third series
(1889), _The Sisters_ (1892), _Astrophel_ (1894), _The Tale of Balen_
(1896), _Rosamund, Queen of the Lombards_ (1899), _A Channel Passage_
(1904), and _The Duke of Gandia_ (1908). Among his prose works are
_Love's Cross Currents_ (1905) (fiction), _William Blake, a Critical
Essay_ (1867), _Under the Microscope_ (1872), in answer to R. Buchanan's
_Fleshly School of Poetry_, _George Chapman, a Critical Essay_ (1875), _A
Study of Shakespeare_ (1879), _A Study of Victor Hugo_ (1886), and _A
Study of Ben Jonson_ (1889).

S. belongs to the class of "Poets' poets." He never became widely
popular. As a master of metre he is hardly excelled by any of our poets,
but it has not seldom been questioned whether his marvellous sense of the
beauty of words and their arrangement did not exceed the depth and mass
of his thought. _The Hymn to Artemis_ in _Atalanta_ beginning "When the
hounds of Spring are on Winter's traces" is certainly one of the most
splendid examples of metrical power in the language. As a prose writer he
occupies a much lower place, and here the contrast between the thought
and its expression becomes very marked, the latter often becoming turgid
and even violent. In his earlier days in London S. was closely associated
with the pre-Raphaelites, the Rossettis, Meredith, and Burne-Jones: he
was thus subjected successively to the classical and romantic influence,
and showed the traces of both in his work. He was never _m._, and for the
last 30 years of his life lived with his friend, Mr. Theodore
Watts-Dunton, at the Pines, Putney Hill. For some time before his death
he was almost totally deaf.

SYLVESTER, JOSHUA (1563-1618).--Poet and translator, is chiefly
remembered by his translation from the French of Du Bartas' _Divine Weeks
and Works_, which is said to have influenced Milton and Shakespeare. He
seconded the _Counterblast against Tobacco_ of James I. with his _Tobacco
Battered and the Pipes Shattered ... by a Volley of Holy Shot thundered
from Mount Helicon_ (1620), and also wrote _All not Gold that Glitters_,
_Panthea: Divine Wishes and Meditations_ (1630), and many religious,
complimentary, and other occasional pieces. S.