132 Proceedings of the Royal Society of Victoria. 



of re-telling old-time stories with picturesque fancy and in 

 easy -flowing verse, an echo of Tennyson's ; but the stroke 

 of Nemesis fell heavily upon his head — albeit somewhat 

 callous — when the great vision of life, the mystery of its 

 passion and its pain, stirred him to soar into the clouds in a 

 grandiloquent " Ode of Life," only to find, when at his 

 highest, Tupper still a little above him. The public ear had 

 become attuned to Tennysonian melodies and Tennysonian 

 meditativeness when the "Songs of Two Worlds" and the 

 " Epic of Hades " appeared, and (in advertisement phrase) 

 " supplied a felt want." For here were poems, tender and 

 graceful, to comprehend which entailed no intellectual strain, 

 and which could be read without a mental effort — and the 

 public likes to do its reading without thinking ; poems not 

 too deep and nowise dry, wdiere wealth of sunny fancy 

 disguised poverty of high imagination, and plenty of whip 

 consoled Pegasus for being stinted of the divine hre. Had 

 Morris maintained this level he would at least have been a 

 charming poet, pleasant to read, in whose ]jages strictly 

 moderate expectations would not be disappointed ; but he 

 fell below himself into mere book-making, and became often 

 weak and washy, in "Songs of Britain," "Gwen," and 

 above — or rather below — all, " The Ode of Life." 



The grove of the muses is full of singing birds, and ringing 

 with sweet, pure notes on every side, but they are mostly 

 imitative, echoes, or variations upon the strains of our 

 mightier singers. The only distinctive class as yet unnoticed, 

 is that of what we may call the " drawingroom poets " — the 

 writers of society verse. These are of the lineage of Suckling, 

 Lovelace, and Waller ; they have caught up the lyre that 

 fell from the hands of Praed. Their work, in its perfection, 

 is marked by elegance of finish, by lightness of touch, and 

 by rapier play of wit ; an art concealing art most cunningly. 

 Seriousness, of course, is alien from their whole atmosphere. 

 They seem, as it were, born out of due time, and to belong of 

 right to the days when patrician beaux fluttered and flaunted 

 with diamond snuff-box and priceless ruffles through the 

 glittering salons of Queen Anne. They have captured and 

 haled at their chariot- wheels the forms of old French Court 

 verse, marvels of daintiness and difficulty, the ballade, the 

 villanelle, the roundel, the triolet, and all their fliiry company. 

 Of these graceful triflers, who are so numerous as to constitute 

 a salient feature of what is, perhaps, our transition period, 

 Austin Dobson, Edmund Gosse, and Andrew Lang, are 



