ere could be no better exercise for a young
verse-writer than to attempt his own expression of this idea, and then
to examine these lines by Beddoes--lines where simplicity and splendour
have been woven together with the ease of accomplished art.

How glorious to live! Even in one thought
The wisdom of past times to fit together,
And from the luminous minds of many men
Catch a reflected truth; as, in one eye,
Light, from unnumbered worlds and farthest planets
Of the star-crowded universe, is gathered
Into one ray.

The effect is, of course, partly produced by the diction; but the
diction, fine as it is, would be useless without the phrasing--that art
by which the two forces of the metre and the sense are made at once to
combat, to combine with, and to heighten each other. It is, however,
impossible to do more than touch upon this side--the technical side--of
Beddoes' genius. But it may be noticed that in his mastery of
phrasing--as in so much besides--he was a true Elizabethan. The great
artists of that age knew that without phrasing dramatic verse was a dead
thing; and it is only necessary to turn from their pages to those of an
eighteenth-century dramatist--Addison, for instance--to understand how
right they were.

Beddoes' power of creating scenes of intense dramatic force, which had
already begun to show itself in _The Brides' Tragedy_, reached its full
development in his subsequent work. The opening act of _The Second
Brother_--the most nearly complete of his unfinished tragedies--is a
striking example of a powerful and original theme treated in such a way
that, while the whole of it is steeped in imaginative poetry, yet not
one ounce of its dramatic effectiveness is lost. The duke's next
brother, the heir to the dukedom of Ferrara, returns to the city, after
years of wandering, a miserable and sordid beggar--to find his younger
brother, rich, beautiful, and reckless, leading a life of gay
debauchery, with the assurance of succeeding to the dukedom when the
duke dies. The situation presents possibilities for just those bold and
extraordinary contrasts which were so dear to Beddoes' heart. While
Marcello, the second brother, is meditating over his wretched fate,
Orazio, the third, comes upon the stage, crowned and glorious, attended
by a train of singing revellers, and with a courtesan upon either hand.
'Wine in a ruby!' he exclaims, gazing into his mistress's eyes:

I'll solemn