harmony to be matched with any later. There is not a more delicate note of magic nature in these poems. The tremulous ardour of "Penumbra" is another witness to the artist's mastery of hand; the finest nerves of life are finely touched; the quiver and ache of soul and senses to which all things are kindled and discoloured by half morbid lights of emotion give a burning pulse of melody to the verses. The same fear or doubt which here is attired in fancies of feverish beauty finds gentler utterance, again outside this circle, in "A New Year's Burden;" the tone and colour have always a fresh and sure harmony. Four poems in a different key from such songs are "The Sea-Limits," "A Young Fir-Wood," "The Honeysuckle," "The Woodspurge; " not songs, but studies of spirit and thought, concrete and perfect. The first of these has the solemn weight and depth in it of living water, and a sound like the speech of the sea when the wind is silent. The very note of that world-old harmony is caught and cast into words.

"Consider the sea's listless chime :

Time's self it is, made audible:

The murmur of the earth's own shell."

This little verse also has the

"Secret continuance sublime"

which "is the sea's end;" it too is a living thing with an echo beyond reach of the sense, its chord of sound one part of the multiform unity of mutual inclusion in which all things rest and mix; like the sigh of the shaken shell, it utters "the same desire and mystery " as earth through its woods, and water through its waves, and man through his multitudes; it too has in it a breath of the life im

measurable and imperishable. The other three of these studies have something of the same air and flavour : their keen truthfulness and subtle sincerity touch the same springs and kindle the same pulses of thought. The passionate accuracy of sense half blunted and half whetted by obsession and possession of pain is given in "The Woodspurge" with a bitterly beautiful exactitude.

In all the glorious poem built up of all these poems there is no great quality more notable than the sweet and sovereign unity of perfect spirit and sense, of fleshly form and intellectual fire. This Muse is as the woman praised in the divine words of the poet himself,

"Whose speech Truth knows not from her thought
Nor Love her body from her soul."

And if not love, how then should judgment? for love and judgment must be one in those who would look into such high and lovely things. No scrutiny can distinguish nor sentence divorce the solid spiritual truth from the bodily beauty of the poem, the very and visible soul from the dazzling veil and vesture of fair limbs and features. There has been no work of the same pitch attempted since Dante sealed up his youth in the sacred leaves of the "Vita Nuova ;" and this poem of his namechild and translator is a more various and mature work of kindred genius and spirit.

Other parts of his work done here have upon them the more instant sign of that sponsor and master of his mind; there is a special and delicate savour of personal interest in the sonnet on the "darkness" of Dante,

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sacred to the fame of a father made again illustrious in his children, which will be cherished with a warm reverence by all heedful students. The poem of " Dante at Verona" stands apart among the rest with a crown on it of the like consecration, as perhaps the loftiest monument of all raised by the devotion of a race of genius for two generations of noble work and love. All incidents and traditions of the great poet's exile are welded together in fusion of ardent verse to forge a memorial as of carven gold. The pure plain ease and force of narrative style melt now and then into the fire of a sad rapture, a glory of tragedy lighting the whole vision as with a funereal and triumphal torch. Even the words of that letter in which Dante put away from him the base conditions of return-words matchless among all that ever a poet found to speak for himself, except only by those few supreme words in which Milton replied to the mockers of his blindness-even these are worthily recast in the mould of English verse by the might and cunning of this workman's hand. Witness the original set against his version.

"Non est hæc via redeundi ad patriam, Pater mi; sed si alia per vos aut deinde per alios invenietur, quæ famæ Dantis atque honori non deroget, illam non lentis passibus acceptabo. Quod si per nullam talem Florentia introitur, nunquam Florentiam introibo. Quidni? nonne solis astrorumque specula ubique conspiciam ? Nonne dulcissimas veritates potero speculari ubique sub cœlo, ni priùs inglorium, immo ignominiosum, populo Florentinæque civitati me reddam ?-Quippe nec panis deficiet."

So wrote Dante in 1316; now partly rendered into English to this effect :

"That since no gate led, by God's will,
To Florence, but the one whereat
The priests and money-changers sat,
He still would wander: for that still,
Even through the body's prison-bars,
His soul possessed the sun and stars."

These and the majestic lines which follow them as comment have the heart of that letter in them; the letter which we living now cannot read without the sense of a double bitterness and sweetness in its sacred speech, so lamentably and so gloriously applicable to the loftiest heir of Dante's faith and place; of his faith as patriot, of his place as exile. It seems that the same price is still fixed for them to pay who have to buy with it the inheritance of sun and stars and the sweetest truths, and all generations of time, and the love and thanks and passionate remembrance of all faithful men for ever.

This poem is sustained throughout at the fit height with the due dignity; nothing feeble or jarring disturbs its equality of exultation. The few verses of bitter ardour which brand as a prostitute the commonweal which has become a common wrong, the common goddess deformed into a common harlot, show a force of indignant imagination worthy of a great poetic satirist, of Byron and Hugo in their worst wrath. The brief pictures of the courtly life at Verona between women and rhymesters, jester and priests, have a living outline and colour; and the last words have the weight in them of time's own sentence.

"Eat and wash hands, Can Grande ;-scarce

We know their deeds now: hands which fed
Our Dante with that bitter bread;

And thou the watch-dog of those stairs
Which, of all paths his feet knew well,

Were steeper found than Heaven or Hell."

No words could more fitly wind up the perfect weft of a poem throughout which the golden thread of Dante's own thought, the hidden light of his solitude at intervals between court-play and justice-work, gleams now and again at each turn of the warp till we feel as though a new remnant of that great spirit's leaving had been vouchsafed us.

Another poem bearing the national mark upon it may be properly named with this; the "Last Confession." Its tragic hold of truth and grasp of passion make it worthy to bear witness to the writer's inheritance of patriotic blood and spirit. Its literal dramatic power of detail and composition is a distinctive test of his various wealth and energy of genius. This great gift of positive reality, here above all things requisite, was less requisite elsewhere, and could not have been shown to exist by any proof derivable from his other poems; though to any student of his designs and pictures the admirable union of this inventive fidelity to whatever of fact is serviceable to the truth of art with the infinite affluence and gracious abundance of imagination must be familiar enough; the subtle simplicity of perception which keeps sight always of ideal likelihood and poetical reason is as evident in his most lyrical and fanciful paintings as in Giorgione's or Carpaccio's. Without the high instinct and fine culture of this quality such a poem as we now have in sight could not have been attempted. The plain heroism of noble naked nature and coherent life is manifest from