rare intentional aberration being
scrupulously noted. And so I have respected his indentation of
the verse; but in the sonnets, while my indentation corresponds,
as a rule, with some autograph, I have felt free to consider
conveniences, following, however, his growing practice to eschew
it altogether.

Apart from questions of taste--and if these poems were to be
arraigned for errors of what may be called taste,
they might be convicted of occasional affectation in
metaphor, as where the hills are 'as a stallion stal-
wart, very-violet-sweet', or of some perversion of human feeling,
as, for instance, the 'nostrils' relish of incense along the sanctuary
side ', or 'the Holy Ghost with warm breast and with ah! bright
wings', these and a few such examples are mostly efforts to force
emotion into theological or sectarian channels, as in 'the com-
fortless unconfessed' and the unpoetic line 'His mystery must be
instressed stressed', or, again, the exaggerated Marianism of
some pieces, or the naked encounter of sensualism and asceticism
which hurts the 'Golden Echo'.--

_Style_ Apart, I say, from such faults of taste, which few as they
numerically are yet affect my liking and more repel my sympathy
than do all the rude shocks of his purely artistic wantonness--
apart from these there are definite faults of style which a reader
must have courage to face, and must in some measure condone before
he can discover the great beauties. For these blemishes in the
poet's style are of such quality and magnitude as to deny him even
a hearing from those who love a continuous literary decorum and
are grown to be intolerant of its absence. And it is well to be
clear that there is no pretence to reverse the condemnation of
those faults, for which the poet has duly suffered. The extravagances
are and will remain what they were. Nor can credit be gained from
pointing them out: yet, to put readers at their ease, I will here
define them: they may be called Oddity and Obscurity; (_Oddity_)
and since the first may provoke laughter when a writer serious (and
this poet is always serious), while the latter must prevent him from
being understood (and this poet has always something to say), it
may be assumed that they were not a part of his intention. Something
of what he thought on this subject may be seen in the following
extracts from his letters. In Feb. 1879, he wrote: 'All therefore
that I think of doing is to keep my verses together in one pla