some, and Alexander Smith had others, of
the excuses which charity not divorced from critical judgment makes for
imperfect poets. Dobell, with sufficient leisure for poetical
production, had a rather unfortunate education and exceedingly bad
health. Smith had something of both of these, and the necessity of
writing for bread as well. Dobell, the elder of the two, and the longer
lived, though both died comparatively young, was a Kentish man, born at
Cranbrook on 5th April 1824. When he was of age his father established
himself as a wine-merchant at Cheltenham, and Sydney afterwards
exercised the same not unpoetical trade. He went to no school and to no
University, privations especially dangerous to a person inclined as he
was to a kind of passionate priggishness. He was always ill; and his
wife, to whom he engaged himself while a boy, and whom he married before
he had ceased to be one, was always ill likewise. He travelled a good
deal, with results more beneficial to his poetry than to his health;
and, the latter becoming ever worse, he died near Cheltenham on 22nd
August 1874. His first work, an "Italomaniac" closet drama entitled _The
Roman_, was published in 1850; his second, _Balder_, in 1853. This
latter has been compared to Ibsen's _Brand_: I do not know whether any
one has noticed other odd, though slight, resemblances between _Peer
Gynt_ and Beddoes' chief work. The Crimean War had a strong influence on
Dobell, and besides joining Smith in _Sonnets on the War_ (1855), he
wrote by himself _England in Time of War_, next year. He did not publish
anything else; but his works were edited shortly after his death by
Professor Nichol.

Alexander Smith, like so many of the modern poets of Scotland, was born
in quite humble life, and had not even the full advantages open to a
Scottish "lad o' pairts." His birthplace, however, was Kilmarnock, a
place not alien to the Muses; and before he was twenty-one (his birth
year is diversely given as 1829 and 1830) the Rev. George Gilfillan, an
amiable and fluent critic of the middle of the century, who loved
literature very much and praised its practitioners with more zeal than
discrimination, procured the publication of the _Life Drama_. It sold
enormously; it is necessary to have been acquainted with those who were
young at the time of its appearance to believe in the enthusiasm with
which it was received; but a little intelligence and a very little
goodwill will enable the critic