"Saw you my Lilian pass this way?
You would know her by the ray
Of light which doth attend her.
Her eye such fire of passion hath,
That none who meet her ever pass,
But they some message send her."
The critics said to me, as they said to Keats, to whom I bore no other resemblance, "This sort of thing will never do. It is an imitation of Shenstone, or of one of the Shepherd and Shepherdess School of the Elizabethan era"—of whom I knew nothing. So I was lost to the Muses, who, however, never missed me.
But my career was not ended. I was told there might be an opening for me in criticism, especially of poetry, as there were many persons great in the critical line, who could not write a verse themselves—and yet lived to become a terror to all who could. My first effort in this direction was upon the book of a young poet whom I knew personally. Not venturing upon longer pieces at first, I selected two sonnets—as the author, Emslie Duncan, called them. The opening was very striking, and was thus expressed:—
"Great God: What is it that I see?
A figure shrimping in the sea."
How natural is the exclamation, I began. The poet invokes the Deity on the threshold of a great surprise. Luther did the same in his famous hymn beginning—
"Great God! What do mine eyes behold!"
Our sonneteer may be said to have borrowed the exclamation from Luther.* But we have no doubt the exclamation of our poet is purely original. He next demands an interpretation of his vision. It is early morning, though the poet does not mention it (great poets are suggestive, and stoop not to detail). An evasive grey mist spreads everywhere, like the new fiscal policy of the Bentinckian type (then in the air), obscuring the landmarks of long-time safety. Still there is one object visible. The poet's eye in "fine frenzy rolling" sees something. He is not sure of the personality that confronts him, and with agnostic precaution worthy of Huxley, he declines to say what it is—until he knows—and so contents himself with telling the reader it is a "figure" out shrimping. The scene is most impressive. As amateurs say, when they do not understand a picture they are praising, "It grows upon you." So this marvellous sonnet grows upon the
* The opening of Luther's fine hymn:—
"Great God! What do mine eyes behold!
The end of things created"—
which long imposed on my imagination and does so still.
reader. If there be not imagination and profundity here, we do not know where to look for it.
Next our poet returns to town, and in White-chapel meets with the statue of a lady attired only in a blouse. Notwithstanding his astonishment he varies his abjuration, and exclaims—