have matched her. Not to speak of Jane and Frederick, no beings could be imagined less likely than Honoria and Felix Vaughan to toss to and fro the thunderbolts of Eros. Obviously it is vain to attempt to link the two sets of stories and their characters. Any clues seeming to lead in that direction soon break in the hand. The utmost which can be asserted is the existence of a pair of situations, or, rather, trains of feeling, with a relation between them, more of opposition than resemblance. The Angel in the House is a picture of human love, of the purest that earth can offer. Being of earth it is mortal; and The Unknown Eros may exhibit the end of such in disease and death, in conjugal despair, and an orphan's desolation. By the side is a second picture of another love; widowed, orphaned too; as passionate, yet immortal, and triumphant in the midst of sorrow and abasement; a persecuted Church. An analogy is traceable, if barely, between the wreck of love in Tennyson's Maud, raving into madness, healed by a Berserker fit, and Patmore's idolatry of home, flaming in its ruins into a rapture of Catholic mysticism. At all events, The Unknown Eros marks such a revolution in the poet. There was, as he does not deny, a struggle before he wandered far from his old For an instant indeed there may have been an impulse to turn back. Amelia,19 in its lodging within the precincts of the furnace of Eros, is a breath of pious, simple tenderness; as too is the exquisite picture of the Virgin-Mother adoring at once Deity and Infancy : All Mothers worship little feet, And kiss the very ground they've trod ; Who was indeed thy God! 20 But the attraction of the light which Shone from the solitary peak at Edgbaston,21 was too strong. Patmore's Muse learnt to speak A language dead.22 Instead of putting words to a Wedding March of Mendelssohn, she sang henceforth of Deliciae Sapientiae de Amore 23 and Auras of Delight.24 Hearth and home lost their most sympathetic minstrel; poetry, I think, has gained. Patmore's earlier verse is clear and sparkling. Often it has charm. Where it is lacking is in strength, impetus. He discovered that he had a gospel to preach, a message to deliver; and the belief transformed him. The advent of a new faith was as if a fountain of inspiration-bitter waters and sweet-had suddenly welled up within. The flood is perturbed and angry; but it carries away. Any who desire to know what power, fire, Patmore had in him, must study not so much The Angel in the House as The Unknown Eros. Poems by Coventry Patmore: vol. iii, Victories of Love; vol. iv, The Unknown Eros. George Bell & Sons (no date). The Unknown Eros, by Coventry Patmore. Third Edition. G. Bell & Sons, 1890. 1 The Angel in the House: Preludes, 5, The Impossibility. 2 Ibid., Cathedral Close, 2. 3 Ibid., The Morning Call, 3. 5 Ibid., Going to Church, 1. Ibid., The Abdication, 4, 5. 9 Victories of Love, From Frederick. 10 Ibid., From Jane to Mrs. Graham. 11 The Unknown Eros, Proem. 12 Ibid., 8, Departure. 14 Ibid., 9, Eurydice. 16 Ibid., 10, The Toys. 4 Ibid., Preludes, 2. Ibid., The Revulsion, 1. 8 Ibid., Husband and Wife, 1. 13 Ibid., 14, 'If I were Dead.' 17 The Portrait (p. 139, Florilegium Amantis, ed. Rich. Garnett. G. Bell, 1879). 18 The Unknown Eros, Proem. 19 Ibid., Amelia. 20 Ibid., Regina Coeli, p. 194 (Third Edition, 1890, one vol. G. Bell & Sons). 21 Ibid., Book II, 4, The Standards. 22 Ibid., Book II, 18, Dead Language. 23 Ibid., XXVIII, Deliciae Sapientiae de Amore. 24 Ibid., XLI, Auras of Delight. DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI 1828-1882 THERE are readers who like their poets unmixed-poets only, not philanthropists or misanthropists, theologians or sceptics, metaphysicians or biologists, wits, satirists, humorists, as well. Rossetti was made to suit them. Just and noble sentiments adorn his verse. Its scenery could have been represented only by a painter of genius, a thoughtful observer of nature. Allusions continually testify to the student both of men and of books. The things are, however, where they are solely to serve the demands of the poet's art. He is poet in every line, every turn of a phrase, in the modelling of every cadence. In a piece of a hundred and eighty stanzas I find but one which is prosaic. He might have seemed of a nature too finely constituted, too subtle, too exclusive, for a ballad writer. Whatever instinct, perhaps weariness of the sole companionship of his own emotions, the craving for an appeal to wider sympathies, turned his Muse in that direction, as poet he accepted freely its obligations. Being the thorough artist he was, the most fastidious of writers became plain, rough, and brusque; the faultlessly metrical versifier stumbled in half rhymes. It can plainly be discerned that the uncouthness, the irregularities, are as intentional as they are popularly effective. I believe that the White Ship, the King's Tragedy, weird Rose Mary itself-Beryl Songs and all-would at a Penny Reading be sure of cheers and tears, even of comprehension, if partial, from the humblest audience. The Three rank among the foremost of their frankly popular class in English verse; and they are the work of one of the most aesthetic of poets. Take the first; and trace how, under cover of a story fitted to captivate a peasant, a mechanic, a child, as fine a web of thought and feeling is worked as could have been spun for a study in brain-work. Lawless licence is duly chastised in Knight and damsel, but as the climax of a most intricate game of cross purposes. Out of a mother's beautiful pride in a daughter's imagined purity: Mary mine that art Mary's rose, is hammered an engine at once to pierce the guilty heart, and to slay its betrayer. The lover who would have lived if loyal, dies for his faithlessness. The Beryl-stone itself, in all its brilliancy, perishes for its perfidious complicity with devils. The magical jewel reflected the future in its gleaming depths, but to none but a pure maid. It had been read by the girl in her childhood. She was to read it now, at her mother's dictate, to learn on which road an ambush might be laid to take the life of her affianced lover, Sir James of Heronhaye, as he rode to be shriven at Holy Cross. She Idared not tell her mother that she fulfilled the fated condition no longer : |