ng that flags, nothing that
overflows." He pronounces "Sister Helen" the greatest ballad in modern
English; but he thinks that "Stratton Water," which is less independent
in composition, and copies the formal as well as the essential
characteristics of popular poetry, is "a study after the old manner too
close to be no closer. It is not meant for a perfect and absolute piece
of work in the old Border fashion, . . . and yet it is so far a copy that
it seems hardly well to have gone so far and no farther. On this ground
Mr. Morris has a firmer tread than the great artist by the light of whose
genius and kindly guidance he put forth the first fruits of his work, as
I did afterwards. In his first book, the ballad of 'Welland River,' the
Christmas carol in 'The Land East of the Sun and West of the Moon,'
etc., . . . are examples of flawless work in the pure early manner. Any
less absolute and decisive revival of mediaeval form . . . rouses some
sense of failure by excess or default of resemblance."

Swinburne's own ballads are clever and learned experiments, but he does
not practise the brevity which he recommends; some of them, such as "The
Bloody Son," "The Weary Wedding," and "The Bride's Tragedy," otherwise
most impressive, would be more so if they were shorter or less wordy.
Though his genius is more lyrical than dramatic, the fascination which
the dramatic method has had for him from the first is as evident in his
ballads as in his series of verse dramas, which begins with "The Queen
Mother," and includes the enormous "Mary Stuart" trilogy. Several of
these are mediaeval in subject; the "Rosamond" of his earliest
volume--Fair Rosamond of the Woodstock Maze--the other "Rosamund, Queen
of the Goths" (1899) in which the period of the action is 573 A.D.; and
"Locrine" (1888), the hero of which is that mythic king of Britain whose
story had been once before dramatised for the Elizabethan stage; and
whose daughter, "Sabrina fair," goddess of the Severn, figures in
"Comus." But these are no otherwise romantic than "Chastelard" or "The
Queen Mother." The dramatic diction is fashioned after the Elizabethans,
of whom Swinburne has been an enthusiastic student and expositor, finding
an attraction even in the morbid horrors of Webster, Ford, and
Tourneur.[62]

Once more the poet touched the Round-Table romances in "The Tale of
Balen" (1896), written in the stanza of "The Lady of Shalott," and in a
style simpler and more d