in bulk, in organisation, in
proper choice of subject, in intelligent criticism of life; but they are
like the summer lightning or the northern aurora, which, though they
shine only now and then, and only it may be for a few moments, shine,
when they do shine, with a beauty unapproachable by gas or candle,
hardly approached by sun or moon, and illuminate the whole of their
world.

Although quotation is in the main impossible in this book, Beddoes,
despite the efforts of his friend Kelsall, of Mr. Swinburne, of Mr.
Gosse (thanks to whom a quasi-complete edition has at last appeared),
and others, is still so little known, that a short one may be allowed in
his case. I have known a critic who said deliberately of the
above-mentioned stanza in "Dream-Pedlary"--

If there were dreams to sell,
What would you buy?
Some cost a passing bell,
Some a light sigh
That shakes from Life's fresh crown
Only a roseleaf down.
If there were dreams to sell--
Merry and sad to tell--
And the crier rung the bell,
What would you buy?

that these ten lines contain more pure poetry than the entire works of
Byron. And the same touch will be found not merely in the "Wolfram
Dirge" mentioned--

If thou wilt ease thine heart
Of Love and all its smart,
Then sleep, dear, sleep.

...

But wilt thou _cure_ thine heart
Of Love and all its smart,
Then die, dear, die--

but in several other dirges (for the dirge is the form natural to
Beddoes), in the "Song from Torrismond," in "Love in Idleness," in the
"Song on the Water" (which is pure early Tennyson), in the exquisite
"Threnody," and in many other things. They have been called artificial:
the epithet can be allowed in no other sense than in that in which it
applies to all the best poetry. And they have the note, which only a few
true but imperfect poets have, of anticipation. Shadows before, both of
Tennyson and Browning, especially of the latter, appear in Beddoes. But
after all his main note is his own: not theirs, not the Elizabethan, not
Shelley's, not another's. And this is what makes a poet.

As Beddoes' forte lay in short and rather uncanny snatches, so that of
Richard Hengist Horne lay in sustained and dignified composition. He was
not christened Hengist at all, but Henry. He had a curious life. In
youth he knew Keats and Wells, having been, like them, at the private
school of Mr. Clarke at Edmonton. He w