cumbered these thousands of years past. For the love of God and regard for travellers, let authors cease to add to the bewildering immensity of them. Even if the subject of your lucubration be the Fogs of London, we require that, if at all, you shall discourse clearly about them.

4. Yet there are some critics with whom obscurity almost passes as a merit.-One might have been excused for supposing that a precept so reasonable would immediately be accepted by everybody, and stand in no need of being enforced, but unfortunately this is not the case. In some quarters it does actually appear that obscurity passes for a merit. In our own day, have we not seen critics fitted by nebulous poets with very long ear-caps ? Upon this question some of them have so sophisticated and obfuscated their intelligence that they openly profess to see high merit in deep obscurity! They exhibit a determination to find in their nebulous favourites suggestions which their writings do not contain, and to draw emotions from them which they would seem to be incapable of yielding. One of them has the boldness to say of certain of the works of a poet belonging to this nebulous school that, whilst they are wellnigh if not wholly unintelligible, their unintelligibility arises from the vast knowledge and understanding of that poet! In short, it would appear that the knowledge and understanding of the said poet were so great that on stirring occasions ordinary human language was practically of no use to him! There is a grim comicality about such critics; but they are worse than comical. We must regard them in the main not as aids to comprehension and understanding at all (which, clearly, should be the heart purpose of the critic), but as actual contributions to the sum-total of human distraction. They must be regarded by

all sensible men in rather a hostile manner-as obstructive nuisances at least.

5. Thou art but a barbarian unto me unless thou speakest intelligibly and lucidly.-It might have been hoped that the Apostle would have kept all the critics right on this subject. "Except ye utter by the tongue words easy to be understood, how shall it be known what is spoken? For ye shall speak unto the air. Therefore, if I know not the meaning of the voice, I shall be unto him that speaketh a barbarian; and he that speaketh shall be a barbarian unto me. . . I had rather speak five words with my understanding that by my voice I might teach others also, than ten thousand in an unknown tongue." How perfectly clear and convincing it should be to the sane mind! All the muddy writers and all the admirers of the muddy should commit the passage to memory. In Apostolic phrase,

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Thou art but a barbarian unto me," unless thou canst speak lucidly or preserve silence suitable to the occasion.

6. The obscure as exemplified by Rossetti.-The Poet's Mind I take to be one profoundly impressed by Life and Nature, and articulately, lucidly, and melodiously responsive to the impression; and I fancy that sensible people will agree with me in this assumption. Assuming this assumption to be sound, what are we to make, for instance, of the following Rossetti sonnet? It runs thus :

"By what word's power, the key of paths untrod,
Shall I the difficult deeps of Love explore,
Till parted waves of song yield up the shore,
Even as that sea which Israel crossed dryshod ?

Frankly, I am bound to say that I can discover no glimmer of sense in the question. One cannot

even discover what, in Life or Nature, has impressed the poet and given rise to his question. He continues :

"For lo! in some poor rhythmic period,
Lady I fain would tell how evermore
Thy soul I know not from the body, nor
Thee from myself, neither our love from God."

Is it an involuntary expression of muddled intoxication, or is he seriously trying to make out that himself and the lady and God are one and indistinguishable! He proceeds :

"Yea, in God's name, and Love's, and thine, would I
Draw from one loving heart such evidence

As to all hearts, all things shall signify;
Tender as dawn's first hill-fire, and intense
As instantaneous penetrating sense

In Spring's birth-hour, of other Springs gone by." 1

In the name of daylight, what is the good man driving at? An author's first duty is to speak intelligibly. A writer in one of the literary papers properly says: "Fine work is immediately convincing the mere turn of a phrase is enough." 2 But how can this sonnet convince us of anything? -when we cannot even squeeze a meaning out of it. It appears to be but a tissue of gaudy words expressive of nothing real, nothing sane. Like the spiritualistic medium, the poet must have been in "a kind of trance or ecstatick fit " when he composed his sonnet. I do not admire gentlemen in " ecstatick fits," and have no pleasure in their ecstatic visions in so far as they are merely suggestive of a "fit." But there is no objection to sane hyperbole. Take, for instance, Shake

speare's gallant lines his fine hyperbole on Silvia :

We quite understand the poet's exaggeration; it is entirely satisfactory and pleasant to sane critics.

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Or take a rapture from Burns :—

"O, Mary, at thy window be !

It is the wished, the trysted hour.
Those smiles and glances let me see
That make the miser's treasure poor.
How blythely wad I bide the stoure,
A weary slave frae sun to sun,

Could I the rich reward secure-
The lovely Mary Morison !

"Yestreen when to the stented string

The dance gaed through the lichted ha',
To thee my fancy took its wing,

I sat but neither heard nor saw ;

Though this was fair and that was braw,
And yon the toast of a' the toon,

I sighed and said, amang them a',
Ye are na Mary Morison."

Or take one from Tennyson :—

"Once

She leaned on me descending; once she lent her hand,
And blissful palpitations of the blood,

Raising a sudden transport, rose and fell.”

Also take one from Longfellow :

Homeward serenely she walked with God's benediction upon her; When she had passed, it seemed like the ceasing of exquisite music.'

No dubiety, I hope, as to the meaning of such passages, or as to whether they are poetry or not.

1 Two Gentlemen of Verona,' iii. 1.

7. The remote in meaning is morally and esthetically lost.-Glance now at Rossetti's sonnet entitled "Known in Vain," said to be one of the poet's favourites :

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'As two whose love, first foolish, widening scope,
Knows suddenly to music high and soft,

The Holy of Holies; who because they scoffed
Are now amazed with shame, nor dare to cope
With the whole truth aloud, lest heaven should ope;
Yet at their meetings laughed not as they laughed
In speech; nor speak at length; but sitting oft
Together, within hopeless sight of hope

For hours are silent; so it happeneth

When work and will awake too late, to gaze
After their life sailed by, and hold their breath.

Ah! who shall dare to search through what sad maze
Thenceforth their incommunicable ways

Follow the desultory feet of Death?

If there be any meaning in such writings at all (frankly, I am unable to discern any meaning in them), it is far too remote to be either morally or esthetically effective. The remote in meaning is morally and esthetically lost. The amazing thing is that any one who is supposed to be sane and sober should write such gibberish as this sonnet exhibits. It reminds us of the story of Fabricio in Gil Blas.' "As a relish to our fruit and cheese," says Gil, "I begged to be favoured with the sight of something, the offspring of his inspired moments." He immediately rummaged among his papers, and read me a sonnet with much energy of tone. Yet, with all the advantage of action and expression, there was something so uncouth in the arrangement as to baffle all conjecture about the meaning. He saw how it puzzled me. "This sonnet, then," said he, "is not quite level to your comprehension. Is not that the fact?" I owned that I should have preferred a construction somewhat less forced. He began

1 The House of Life,' sonnet lxv.