on Landor.

What, then, is lacking to make Mr. Swinburne a poet of a rank even higher
than that which he occupies? Who can tell? There is no science that can
master this chemistry of the brain. He is too copious. "Bothwell" is
long enough for six plays, and "Tristram of Lyonesse" is prolix beyond
even mediaeval narrative. He is too pertinacious; children are the joy
of the world and Victor Hugo is a great poet; but Mr. Swinburne almost
makes us excuse Herod and Napoleon III. by his endless odes to Hugo, and
rondels to small boys and girls. _Ne quid nimis_, that is the golden
rule which he constantly spurns, being too luxuriant, too emphatic, and
as fond of repeating himself as Professor Freeman. Such are the defects
of so noble a genius; thus perverse Nature has decided that it shall be,
Nature which makes no ruby without a flaw.

The name of Mr. Robert Bridges is probably strange to many lovers of
poetry who would like nothing better than to make acquaintance with his
verse. But his verse is not so easily found. This poet never writes in
magazines; his books have not appealed to the public by any sort of
advertisement, only two or three of them have come forth in the regular
way. The first was "Poems, by Robert Bridges, Batchelor of Arts in the
University of Oxford. _Parva seges satis est_. London: Pickering,
1873."

This volume was presently, I fancy, withdrawn, and the author has
distributed some portions of it in succeeding pamphlets, or in books
printed at Mr. Daniel's private press in Oxford. In these, as in all Mr.
Bridges's poems, there is a certain austere and indifferent beauty of
diction and a memory of the old English poets, Milton and the earlier
lyrists. I remember being greatly pleased with the "Elegy on a Lady whom
Grief for the Death of Her Betrothed Killed."

"Let the priests go before, arrayed in white,
And let the dark-stoled minstrels follow slow
Next they that bear her, honoured on this night,
And then the maidens in a double row,
Each singing soft and low,
And each on high a torch upstaying:
Unto her lover lead her forth with light,
With music and with singing, and with praying."

This is a stately stanza.

In his first volume Mr. Bridges offered a few rondeaux and triolets,
turning his back on all these things as soon as they became popular. In
spite of their popularity I have the audacity to like them still, in
their humble twittering way.