upon an emotion at an unnecessary length is always dangerous. Sustained feeling is not at all likely to be powerful. The most powerful emotional poems are not those in which the sentiment is expressed in many stanzas or in many lines. I want now to give you, in contrast to the work of the real Spasmodics, one example of what I call a powerful poem. I do not know who wrote it; neither does anybody else. I found it the other day in the recent Oxford Anthology. It is a religious poem, a prayer. You know that I have not much liking for religious poetry in general, and little sympathy with most forms of religious emotion. Nevertheless I do not hesitate to say that I think this one of the strongest poems of an emotional kind that I have ever seen. It is simply entitled "Non Nobis,"-words taken from the old Latin version of the first verse of the hundred and fifteenth psalm, commencing "Not unto us, O Lord."

Not unto us, O Lord,

Not unto us the rapture of the day,

The peace of night, or Love's divine surprise,

High heart, high speech, high deeds 'mid honouring eyes;
For at Thy Word

All these are taken away.

Not unto us, O Lord:

To us thou givest the scorn, the scourge, the scar,

The ache of life, the loneliness of death,

The insufferable sufficiency of breath;

And with Thy sword

Thou piercest very far.

Not unto us, O Lord:

Nay, Lord, but unto her be all things given

My light and life and earth and sky be blasted

But let not all that wealth of love be wasted:

Let Hell afford

The pavement of her Heaven!

"This is only a Christian prayer," perhaps you were

beginning to think-"there is nothing remarkable in t except the fine, strong, sonorous verse." But the surprise Come the third stanza. This sudden focussing of religious emotion upon the object of human love SAAT 10 me me if de noblest and strongest portical efforts that ļ bove ever rad Observe, also, that de carmor of inv i fut verwise indioed dan by its insity. 14 I de przez dhe sister, or the wife, di won je u mnije Te a aut know; we catch eyes, g tar i te pastrate expres io, é jove kot na wyser way inlere team to be better that be t 14. **** merr gut how we serve to favour, say many Ture it but ov ting du sø for: sep Son. He darn us yoy by unort, y a

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CHAPTER XIII

THE POETRY OF LORD DE TABLEY

OUR last lecture was about a poet difficult of appreciation by the common reader, and our present lecture will treat of another poet of the rare class-very different indeed from Bridges, but in some respect more exquisite; indeed, he is one of the most exquisite poets even of a period which included Tennyson and Rossetti. Perhaps some of you have not even heard of his name; I confess that he is not widely known, except to men of letters. But that is because he is too exquisite for the general reader. As for his real position in poetry, it will be enough to observe that Tennyson, who was very economical about his admiration, greatly admired this man; and in some respects De Tabley's work is really equal to some of Tennyson's work. Perhaps you will think that we are taking up rather difficult poets. This is true; but it seems to me important that the highest poetry, no matter how little generally known, should be somewhat more than known to university students. A word about the poet himself, who commonly wrote during his lifetime under the name of Lancaster. His real name was John Byrne Leicester Warren, Lord De Tabley; and he was the last of an illustrious and aristocratic race. He was born in 1835 and died in 1895-not quite six years ago. He was an Oxford man, and a distinguished scholar, not only in one but in a multitude of directions. He was also distinguished as a numismatist, as a book-collector, as a student of classical antiquities, and as a botanist. But he was one of the shyest men who ever lived, sometimes disappearing altogether for many years at a time. In later life it was said of him that he had only two friends, and that he had not seen one of them for five years nor the other for six years. This

was perhaps partly due to a remarkably sensitive organization; but I have an idea that the sensitiveness must have been greatly aggravated by life at English public schools. A sensitive boy is certain to be made extremely unhappy at an English public school, and the unhappiness may often be of a kind that poisons life. The misfortunes of Shelley and other distinguished men have no doubt been partly due to the treatment they received in public schools. There are exceptions, of course, as in the case of a sensitive boy who happens to be uncommonly strong and uncommonly aggressive. Some day, when it is sensibly recognized that a boy having a delicate and artistic temperament ought not to be subjected to the brutality of English public schools, fewer lives will be spoiled.

Lord De Tabley's peculiar character, however, must have been in part hereditary; his delicacy was the rare delicacy we find in members of old princely families that are becoming extinct. No better illustration of his capacity for affection need be mentioned than the fact that when a college friend of his was accidentally killed, many years passed before he recovered from the grief of this misfortune; and even late in life, he could not bear to hear the name of his dead friend mentioned, it caused him too much pain. To such a nature, the least unkind word or look, the least vulgarity or egotism of manner, necessarily gave great pain. He could not mingle with men without hurt; and therefore he eventually resigned himself to doing without them, locking himself up with his books, his statues, his rare coins, and his botanical specimens. He was the friend of nearly all the great poets and thinkers of the time; but he saw them only at long intervals.

Of course a man who thus shut out the nineteenth century could not very well reflect it in his work. Lord De Tabley, although one of the latest and most exquisite poets of the century, did not belong to it in feeling. He seems to have inherited an intense love for the artistic principles of the

classic age. He did not indeed care for classical form, as the school of Pope understood it; he did not write much in the heroic couplet. On the contrary he liked better, infinitely better, the Elizabethan form and the later romantic form; and the poet who of all poets most influenced him, even while shocking him, was Swinburne. What I mean by his affinity to eighteenth century poetry is the importance which he attaches to the form of the rhymes, to the melody of the verse, quite irrespective of subject and feeling. The modern high art in poetry makes the form the secondary, not the primary, consideration. In the eighteenth century the rule was exactly the opposite; and Lord De Tabley observed that rule. Since he was in all his heart and soul a true poet, the result was beautiful; for we find the thought as exquisite as the verse in the best of his work. You must not expect, however, much original thought from Lord De Tabley; he was not a great thinker. His originality lies in the musical colour of his verse, and in a certain delightful tenderness and vividness in his expression of emotion or of feeling for Nature. Where he sometimes equalled Tennyson was in the description of natural scenery and animal life.

I must also tell you that not all of De Tabley's poetry is excellent. A great deal of what he wrote in early life, both dramatic and narrative, is worth nothing at all. He acknowledged the fact himself. For many years after, he actually gave up all hope of being a poet, and returned to the art only in the evening of his career. But the little volume published only two or three years before his death, under the simple title of "Poems," represents the essence of all that was best in him. It is wonderful work. I believe that his failure as a poet in early life was principally due to his natural timidity-his instinctive fear of saying something that might seem unconventional, incorrect, not according to the canons. This timidity does not appear at all in his little collection of lyrical verse.

De Tabley must be studied quite as closely as Tennyson,