[49] Compare Donne's "No cross is so extreme, as to have none"—a thought upon which many paradoxical couplets were turned in the seventeenth century. But Donne goes a little further than his fellows. He seems to have known that an image, bound up with its original, is more than a likeness:—
Let crosses so take what hid Christ in thee;
And be His image, or not His, but He.
[50] "The metre in my present volume," wrote the author in a suppressed preface to New Poems, "is completely based on the principles which Mr. Patmore may be said virtually to have discovered."
[51] "Mrs. Meynell's Essays" in the National Review, Aug. 1896.
[52] Poetry of Pathos and Delight, being selections made by Alice Meynell from the poetry of Coventry Patmore.
[53] "A Captain of Song," addressed to Patmore before his death, and at his death published in the Athenæum, December 5, 1896.
[54] "Many a bit of true seeing I have had to learn again, through science having sophisticated my eye, inward or outward. And many a bit I have preserved, to the avoidance of a world of trouble, by concerning myself no more than any child about the teachings of science. Especially is this the case in regard to light. I never lost the child's instinctive rightness of outlook upon light because I flung the scientific theories aside as so much baffling distortion of perspective. 'Here is cart for horse,' I felt rather than saw, and would nothing with them. . . . Though scientists in camp stand together against me, I would not challenge the consensus of the poets."
[55] To this lady's "genius for friendship" the dedication of Mr. Joseph Conrad's Under Western Eyes bears witness.
[56] William Watson's on the Coronation of Edward VII.
[57] It may also be observed in passing that, while he was more experienced in privation than were any of his friends, Francis could be fastidious. It is still told of him in Sussex, where a clever cook attended his invalided appetite, that he would make great demonstrations at the mere sight of a dish he disapproved. Laying down his knife and fork this frank guest would proclaim against one of the several viands. "Miss Laurence, I hate mutton!" The piled-up emphasis of his voice made such a sentence tremendously effective. "Wilfrid," he once said to my father, "Wilfrid, the Palace Court food is shocking!"