essaire"; and in all these cases the
humour subserves and advances a serious criticism of books or of life.

As we have now seen him engaged in the duty of criticising others, it
will not be out of place to cite in this connection, though they belong
to other periods, some criticisms of himself. As far back as 1853, he
had observed, with characteristic lucidity, that the great fault of his
earlier poems was "the absence of charm." "Charm" was indeed the
element in which they were deficient; but, as years advanced, charm was
superadded to thought and feeling. In 1867, he said in a letter to his
friend F.T. Palgrave: "Saint Beuve has written to me with great interest
about the _Obermann poem_, which he is getting translated. Swinburne
fairly took my breath away. I must say the general public praise me in
the dubious style in which old Wordsworth used to praise Bernard Barton,
James Montgomery, and suchlike; and the writers of poetry, on the other
hand--Browning, Swinburne, Lytton--praise me as the general public
praises its favourites. This is a curious reversal of the usual order of
things. Perhaps it is from an exaggerated estimate of my own
unpopularity and obscurity as a poet, but my first impulse is to be
astonished at Swinburne's praising me, and to think it an act of
generosity. Also he picks passages which I myself should have picked,
and which I have not seen other people pick."

In 1869, when the first Collected Edition of his poems was in the press,
he wrote to Palgrave, who had suggested some alterations, this estimate
of his own merits and defects,--

"I am really very much obliged to you for your letter. I think the
printing has made too much progress to allow of dealing with any of the
long things now; I have left 'Merope' aside entirely, but the rest I
have reprinted. In a succeeding edition, however, I am not at all sure
that I shall not leave out the second part of the 'Church of Brou.' With
regard to the others, I think I shall let them stand--but often for
other reasons than because of their intrinsic merit. For instance, I
agree that in the 'Sick King in Bokhara' there is a flatness in parts;
but then it was the first thing of mine dear old Clough thoroughly
liked. Against 'Tristram,' too, many objections may fairly be urged; but
then the subject is a very popular one, and many people will tell you
they like it best of anything I have written. All this has to be taken
into account. 'Balder' perhaps