his work--no
doubt of these later poems, like _The Inn Album_ and the rest--with a
little too much of self-congratulation. "The poets pour us wine," he
says, "and mine is strong--the strong wine of the loves and hates and
thoughts of man. But it is not sweet as well, and my critics object.
Were it so, it would be more popular than it is. Sweetness and strength
do not go together, and I have strength."

But that is not the real question. The question is--Is the strength
poetical? Has it imagination? It is rough, powerful, full of humanity,
and that is well. But is it half prose, or wholly prose? Or is it
poetry, or fit to be called so? He thinks that _Prince Hohenstiel_, or
_Red Cotton Nightcap Country_, are poetry. They are, it is true, strong;
and they are not sweet. But have they the strength of poetry in them,
and not the strength of something else altogether? That is the question
he ought to have answered, and it does not occur to him.

Yet, he was, in this very book, half-way out of this muddle. There are
poems in it, just as strong as _The Inn Album_, but with the ineffable
spirit of imaginative emotion and thought clasped together in them, so
that the strong is stronger, and the humanity deeper than in the pieces
he thought, being deceived by the Understanding, were more strong than
the poems of old. In _Bifurcation_, in _St. Martin's Summer_, the
diviner spirit breathes. There is that other poem called _Forgiveness_
of which I have already spoken--one of his masterpieces. _Cenciaja_,
which may be classed with _Forgiveness_ as a study of the passion of
hatred, is not so good as its comrade, but its hatred is shown in a mean
character and for a meaner motive. And the _Prologue_, in its rhythm and
pleasure, its subtlety of thought, its depth of feeling, and its close
union of both, recalls his earlier genius.

The first of the _Pisgah Sights_ is a jewel. It is like a poem by
Goethe, only Goethe would have seen the "sight" not when he was dying,
but when he was alive to his finger-tips. The second is not like
Goethe's work, nor Browning's; but it is a true picture of what many
feel and are. So is _Fears and Scruples_. As to _Natural Magic_, surely
it is the most charming of compliments, most enchantingly expressed.

The next volume of original poems was _La Saisiaz_ and the _Two Poets of
Croisic_. The _Croisic Poets_ are agreeable studies, written with verve
and lucidity, of two fantastic events which lifted thes