ed everything, except language; as a
novelist he can do everything, except tell a story; as an artist he is
everything, except articulate. Too strange to be popular, too individual
to have imitators, the author of _Richard Feverel_ stands absolutely
alone. It is easy to disarm criticism, but he has disarmed the disciple.
He gives us his philosophy through the medium of wit, and is never so
pathetic as when he is humorous. To turn truth into a paradox is not
difficult, but George Meredith makes all his paradoxes truths, and no
Theseus can thread his labyrinth, no OEdipus solve his secret.

The most perfect and the most poisonous of all modern French poets once
remarked that a man can live for three days without bread, but that no
one can live for three days without poetry. This, however, can hardly be
said to be a popular view, or one that commends itself to that curiously
uncommon quality which is called common-sense. I fancy that most people,
if they do not actually prefer a salmis to a sonnet, certainly like their
culture to repose on a basis of good cookery.

A cynical critic once remarked that no great poet is intelligible and no
little poet worth understanding, but that otherwise poetry is an
admirable thing. This, however, seems to us a somewhat harsh view of the
subject. Little poets are an extremely interesting study. The best of
them have often some new beauty to show us, and though the worst of them
may bore yet they rarely brutalize.

It is a curious thing that when minor poets write choruses to a play they
should always consider it necessary to adopt the style and language of a
bad translator. We fear that Mr. Bohn has much to answer for.

In one sonnet he makes a distinct attempt to be original and the result
is extremely depressing.

Earth wears her grandest robe, by autumn spun,
_Like some stout matron who of youth has run_
_The course_, . . .

is the most dreadful simile we have ever come across even in poetry. Mr.
Griffiths should beware of originality. Like beauty, it is a fatal gift.

There is a wide difference between the beautiful Tuscan city and the
sea-city of the Adriatic. Florence is a city full of memories of the
great figures of the past. The traveller cannot pass along her streets
without treading in the very traces of Dante, without stepping on soil
made memorable by footprints never to be effaced. The greatness of the
surroundings, the palaces, churches, and