WITH VICTORIAN POETRY 377 



suckles,' Andrew Lang's Ballades and Sharp's 'Weird of 

 Michael Scot,' Dobson's dealings with the eighteenth century 

 and Noel's 'Little Child's Monument,' Barnes's Dorsetshire 

 Poems and Buchanan's London Lyrics, the songs from 

 ' Empedocles on Etna ' and Ebenezer Jones's ' Pagan Drinking 

 Chant,' Shelley's Ode to the West Wind and Mrs. Browning's 

 ' Pan is Dead,' Newman's hymns and Gosse's Chant Royal. 

 The kaleidoscope presented by this lyric is so inexhaustible 

 that any man with the fragment of a memory might pair off 

 scores of poems by admired authors, and yet not fall upon the 

 same parallels as those which I have made. 



The genius of our century, debarred from epic, debarred 

 from drama, falls back upon idyllic and lyrical expression. 

 In the idyll it satisfies its objective craving after art. In the 

 lyric it pours forth personality. It would be wrong, however, 

 to limit the wealth of our poetry to these two branches. 

 Such poems as Wordsworth's ' Excursion,' Byron's ' Don 

 Juan ' and ' Childe Harold,' Mrs. Browning's ' Aurora Leigh,' 

 William Morris's ' Earthly Paradise,' Clough's ' Amours de 

 Voyage,' are not to be classified in either species. They are 

 partly autobiographical, and in part the influence of the tale 

 makes itself distinctly felt in them. Nor again can we omit 

 the translations, of which so many have been made ; some of 

 them real masterpieces and additions to our literature. Gary's 

 Dante, Rossetti's versions from the early Tuscan lyrists, 

 FitzGerald's Omar Khayyam, are eminent examples. But the 

 list might be largely extended. Then again Morris's ' Song 

 of Sigurd,' Swinburne's ' Tristram of Lyonesse,' E. Arnold's 

 * Light of Asia,' deserve a place apart, as epical rehandlings 

 of memorable themes. 



IV 



In all this Victorian poetry we find the limitations of our 

 epoch, together with its eminent qualities. Criticism and 

 contemplation have penetrated literature with a deeper 

 and more pervasive thoughtfulness. Our poets have lost 

 spontaneity and joyful utterance. But they have acquired a 

 keener sense of the problems which perplex humanity. The 



