predicted for it. I suspect it will be a phenomenon in the history of Histories if the fruits of imagination do not outlive those of research. The Poetical Works of the Rev. H. H. Milman. Three vols. John Murray, 1839. (Also: The Fall of Jerusalem, 1825, New edition. The Martyr of Antioch, 1823, New edition. Belshazzar, 1822. John Murray.) 1 The Belvidere Apollo, vol. ii (1839 ed.). 2 Samor, Lord of the Bright City, vol. ii (1839 ed.). 3 The Fall of Jerusalem: A Dramatic Poem, pp. 7-8 (1825 ed.). 4 Ibid., pp. 64–5 (1825 ed.). Ibid., pp. 34–5 (1825 ed.). The Martyr of Antioch: A Dramatic Poem, pp. 146 and 149 (1823 ed.). Ibid., pp. 159-60 (1823 ed.). Ibid., pp. 33–5 (1823 ed.). 9 Belshazzar: A Dramatic Poem, p. 123 (1822 ed.). JOHN KEBLE 1792-1866 CANON AINGER, an admirable critic, once commented to me on the claim of the writer of a popular hymn to respect as a poet: You know, the standard of poetic merit in hymns is not high.' Is it necessary to plead for saintly Keble's poetic title, as it were, in forma pauperis ? He wrote, indeed, other verse, some of it of worth; for example, a delightful appeal of wild flowers to the lord of the manor to spare from his high farming: Shady spots and nooks, where we Yet may flourish, safe and free.1 But, as a whole, it is inconsiderable; and by his hymns he must virtually be judged. Without going, therefore, outside The Christian Year and Lyra Innocentium, I am glad for my own sake to be able from them to answer my question in the negative. I find genuine poetic sensibility in a fair proportion of their contents. Tenderness, sympathy, judgement, and delicacy, aspirations after the noble and sublime, are there. Everywhere I observe a feeling for beauty, a sincere longing to understand and interpret Nature. Every one has felt the sweetness of some five or six stanzas of the Evening Hymn in The Christian Year. Occasional Thoughts on children's troubles in the Lyra Innocentium almost match them.2 With equal intuition and affectionateness Keble draws happy lessons from sickness, the heart's self-doubtings, mourning, and death. At times, not often, he nears sublimity; as when he imagines a revelation of the spot in the Garden of Gethsemane, That felt Thee kneeling-touch'd Thy prostrate brow; 3 when he follows the spirit of the Crucified At large among the dead; 4 or, as by the Saviour's side, muses on the lone upland above the waters of Gennesaret. He is nevertheless more at home where he habitually dwelt; that is, amid scenes of natural grace and beauty. They make for him fitting framework for every word of Prophet and Evangelist. He had sat at Wordsworth's feet, and learnt to register each soft touch invisible,5 by which Nature, newly born at every successive sunrise, works her wonders. He could have written a monograph on and volumes on the multitudinous flowers of the field : Sweet nurslings of the vernal skies, Bath'd in soft airs, and fed with dew; What more than magic in you lies, To fill the heart's fond view! Relics ye are of Eden's bowers, Mountains, in particular, he loved for their peculiar companionship, as he deemed, with Heaven: Where is thy favour'd haunt, eternal Voice, Where, undisturb'd by sin and earth, the soul 'Tis on the mountain's summit dark and high, 'Tis 'mid the strong foundations of the earth, No sounds of worldly toil ascending there, Lone Nature feels that she may freely breathe, Are heard her sacred tones: the fitful sweep Of winds across the steep, Through wither'd bents-romantic note and clear, The wheeling kite's wild solitary cry, And, scarcely heard so high, The dashing waters when the air is still From many a torrent rill That winds unseen beneath the shaggy fell, Track'd by the blue mist well; Such sounds as make deep silence in the heart For him each day marshals a triumphal pageant, from dawn, with its every dewy spark jewelling leaf and blossom, to the glory of the clouds about the setting sun. To a certain extent-though, in general, it must be confessed, he does violence to his own sweet nature in dogmatizing to the young-he even consents to view the flush of springtide, the garlands of May, through a child's eyes.9 Now and then, for moments, he actually seems, though in a hymnal, to forget hymnology, and to be unconscious of all but Nature's and Music's magic: 'Tis misty all, both sight and sound I only know 'tis fair and sweet 'Tis wandering on enchanted ground Almost it might be a bard of Love who sang, if he had ended there : Who ever saw the earliest rose But there's a sweeter flower than e'er 'Tis Love, the last blest gift of Heaven; But tenderer than a dove's soft eye, Having said so much in Keble's favour, can I stop short of pronouncing him not only a writer of poetry, but a poet inspired? I can, and must, though, in the opinion of many, I condemn myself as a critic. One quality of high poetry, though there are approaches towards it now and then, I do not discover in him; and, unfortunately, it happens to be of the essence. The defect is not that he is facile and diffuse; for that weakness he shares with some of the highest. It is not that his tendency, although he can be daintily simple, is to be artificial, ingenious, and elaborate. Greatness may be there too. The capital fault I find, sensible as I am of an apparent paradox, is that the piety, which is the one motive of his verse, is wanting in passion. Passion is a condition of all masterly achievement, probably in all literature, certainly in poetry. It burns beneath Dryden's Court politics, Swift's misanthropy, Burns's defiant humour, Byron's cynicism. Above |