130 Proceedinr/s of the Royal Societi/ of Victoria. 



metaphor) every time it is Imriiedly tickled with a pen, 

 laughs into such stintless harvests. Poppies and tares among 

 the wheat, of course. No matter for that ; posterity, which 

 has plenty of time, may sort them out. And no one shivers 

 with a premonition of doom, doubting what manner of 

 sorting that will be when men gather the bundles for the 

 burning. If Browning is profuse through crowded abun- 

 dance of ideas, Swinburne through affluence of fancy and 

 lordship over language, and Morris through wealth of 

 material and facility of utterance, we might say that Robert 

 Buchanan is so because he is in earnest about everything 

 but writing good poetry ; Edwin Arnold because he thinks 

 that the "Light of Asia" has cast a glamour over men's eyes 

 that Avill last his time, "and look a rosy warmth from marge 

 to marge" of his exotic gardens ; and Lewis Morris because 

 he thinks — or shall we dare to say because he doesn't think ? 

 Buchanan as a singing voice has been silent for some 

 seven years, but between his twentieth and his fortieth year 

 he poured forth verse enough to float — or swamp — three 

 reputations. With no reserve or self-restraint, opening his 

 heart to all the world, troubled by no misgivings as to his 

 capacity to adorn any class of subject, he has roamed from 

 classical studies to Scottish idyls, from " Phil Blood's Leap " 

 to mystic transcendentalism. In " Idyls of Inverburn " and 

 "North Coast" he struck his richest vein, full of perfect 

 pastoral beauty and tender human sympathy, the ])athos 

 and the dignity of poverty and suffering. In " White Rose 

 and Red," he essayed an Indian idyl, and in " Saint Abe " 

 a Mormon romance of the Bret Harte type, with a success 

 the spuriousness of which it takes an American eye to detect. 

 But what Me2:»histopheles at his elbow ])rompted him to 

 poetise Scotch metaphysics in " The Book of Orm," or to out- 

 Shelley Shelley in " Napoleon Fallen"? There is no poet to 

 whom the paradox is more applicable, " If he had written 

 less, he would have written more." Akin to him in 

 sincerity of conviction and in early promise was Jean 

 Ingelow, whose voice rose like the sonof of a lark from 

 daisied meadows, just as the nightingale notes of Mrs. 

 Browning were for ever hushed. Her lyrical idyls were full 

 of the music of sunny brooks and vocal English hedgerows. 

 Among the cottage homes of England, her voice rang very 

 sweet and true. There was surely variety and human 

 interest enough in these for a life's work. She has not 

 enhanced her fame by recent more ambitious efforts. 



