HE's dead these long áges, and áll his bones moúldered,
And scattered his dúst to the points of the compass,
But we still have and will have for éver amóng us
The heart of the Póet embalmed in his verse.

DALKEY LODGE, DALKEY, April 10, 1855,

THAT I'm much praised by men of little sense
Offénds me nót; I know it 's mere pretence,
The hollow echo of what, every day,

They hear men of a better judgment say,

TOURNAY (BELGIUM), Nov. 16, 1854.

"PÁGAN, forsake your Gods," the Christian cries,
"And worship mine; your Gods are dirt and lies."
"Christian," replies the Pagan, "honor 's due
Éven to your Gods; to each his God is true." h

DALKEY LODGE, DALKEY, March 31, 1855.

LETTER

RECEIVED FROM A REVIEWER TO WHOM THE AUTHOR, INTENDING TO SEND THE MS. OF HIS SIX PHOTOGRAPHS OF THE HEROIC TIMES FOR REVIEW, HAD BY MISTAKE SENT, INSTEAD OF IT, A MS. OF MILTON'S PARADISE REGAINED.

With all the care and attention permitted by my multitúdinous And harassing, yet never upon any account to be neglected, avocátions,

I have read over, verse by verse, from near about the beginning to the very end,

The poem which, some thirteen or fourteen months ago, you did me the honor to enclóse me; And as I feel for literature in general and especially for literary

men

A regard which I make bold to flatter myself is something more than merely professional,

In returning you your work I venture to make these few hurried observations:

And first, I'm so far from being of opinion that the work 's wholly devoid of mérit

That I think I can discern here and there an odd half line

or líne in it,

Which even Lord Byron himself

became pópular,

for since Lord Byron

Reviewers' opinions concerning that truly great man have undergone, as you know, a most remarkable change I think I can discern, I say, here and there in your work an odd half line or ódd line ༄』,

Which even the greatest poet of modern times need not have been ashamed of.

And the whole scope and tenor of your work, on whichever side or in whatever light I examine it,

Whether religiously, esthetically, philosophically, morally or

That, in process of time, and supposing your disposition amenable to advice and corréction,

You may by dint of study and perseverance acquire sufficient poétical skill

To entitle you to a place somewhere or other among respectable English poets.

And now I know I may count upon your good sense and candor to excuse me!

If I add to this, you'll do me the justice to allow, no illiberal praise of your performance,

:

Some few honest words of dispraise, wrung from me by the

necéssity of the case:

Your style, for I will not mince the matter, seems to me very

óften to be

A little too Bombastes Furioso, or, small things to compare

with great, a little too Miltónic;

Its grandiloquence not sufficiently softened down by that copious admixture of commonplace!

Which renders Bab Macaulay, James Montgomery and Mrs. Hemans so delightful;

Whilst on the other hand it exhibits, but too often alas! the

directly opposite and worse fault

Of nude and barren simplicity, absence not of adornment alone but even of décent dress."

"

I'll not worry you with a host of examples; to a man of your sense one 's as good as a thousand;

"Ex uno disce omnes," as Eneas said, wishing to save Dido time and trouble;

The very last line of your poem, the summing up of your whole work,

Where, if anywhere, there should be dignity and emphasis, something to make an impréssion

And ring in the ear of the reader after he has laid down the book.

And be quoted by him to his children and children's children on his deathbed,

As an honored ancestor of mine, one of my predecessors in this very reviewer's chair,

Is said to have died with no, not with the concluding

verse of Homer's Iliad on his lips,

For Homer has by some fatality concluded his great poem much after your meagre fashion --

But with the magnificent couplet on his lips, which the judicious translator substitutes for the lame Homeric énding:

"Such honors Ilium to her hero paid,..

And peaceful slept the mighty Hector's shade."

The very last line of your work, I say, the peroration of your póem,

So far from presenting us, like this fine verse, with something full and round and swélling

For ear and memory to take hold of and keep twirling about,

barrel-organ-wise,

That is to say when ear and memory have, as they often have, nothing better to do,

Hasn't even sufficient pith in it for an indifferent prose périod, Exhibits such a deficiency of thew and sinew, not to say of soul and ethereal spirit,

Such a woful dearth of rough stuff and raw material, not to say of finish and top dréssing,

That the reader cares but little either to catch a hold or keep a hold of it,

And it drops from between the antennae of his disappointed

expectation

Pretty much in the same way as a knotless thread from between a housewife's fingers.

And yet when I consider how well adapted your "Home to his mother's house, private, returned" is

To take off the edge of the reading appetite, and with what right good will

After reading this verse one lays down the book without wishing it were longer,

I can't help correcting my first judgment and saying, with a smile, to myself:

"Well, after all, that finale 's less injudicious than appears at first sight."

And now I have only to beg your kind excuse for the freedom of the observations

Which in my double capacity of friend of literature and literary men,

And clerk of the literary market, bound to protect the public Against unsound, unwholesome or fraudulently made-up intelléctual food,

I have felt it my duty to make on your, to me at least, very new and original work,

A work which, crude and imperfect as it is and full of marks of a beginner's hand,

Affords to the practised critic's eye indubitable evidences of a látent power