blossom of them; and it is from that history that
Rossetti has taken the subjects of the two longer ballads of his second
volume: of the three admirable ballads in it, The King's Tragedy (in
which Rossetti has dexterously interwoven some relics of James's own
exquisite early verse) reaching the highest level of dramatic success,
and marking perfection, perhaps, in this kind of poetry; which, in the
earlier volume, gave us, among other pieces, Troy Town, Sister Helen,
and Eden Bower.

Like those earlier pieces, the ballads of the [217] second volume bring
with them the question of the poetic value of the "refrain"--

Eden bower's in flower:
And O the bower and the hour!

--and the like. Two of those ballads--Troy Town and Eden Bower, are
terrible in theme; and the refrain serves, perhaps, to relieve their
bold aim at the sentiment of terror. In Sister Helen again, the
refrain has a real, and sustained purpose (being here duly varied also)
and performs the part of a chorus, as the story proceeds. Yet even in
these cases, whatever its effect may be in actual recitation, it may
fairly be questioned, whether, to the mere reader their actual effect
is not that of a positive interruption and drawback, at least in pieces
so lengthy; and Rossetti himself, it would seem, came to think so, for
in the shortest of his later ballads, The White Ship--that old true
history of the generosity with which a youth, worthless in life, flung
himself upon death--he was contented with a single utterance of the
refrain, "given out" like the keynote or tune of a chant.

In The King's Tragedy, Rossetti has worked upon motive, broadly human
(to adopt the phrase of popular criticism) such as one and all may
realise. Rossetti, indeed, with all his self-concentration upon his
own peculiar aim, by no means ignored those general interests which are
external to poetry as he conceived it; as he has [218] shown here and
there, in this poetic, as also in pictorial, work. It was but that, in
a life to be shorter even than the average, he found enough to occupy
him in the fulfilment of a task, plainly "given him to do." Perhaps,
if one had to name a single composition of his to readers desiring to
make acquaintance with him for the first time, one would select: The
King's Tragedy--that poem so moving, so popularly dramatic, and
lifelike. Notwithstanding this, his work, it must be conceded,
certainly through no narrowness or egotism, but in the