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130 and bore unflinching witness to the high work of contemporary men not yet properly recognised—Hugo and Arnold as poets, and Rossetti and Morris (to speak only of this book of Essays and Studies)—and we must be ready to admit the debt of gratitude we owe to him for his powerful and fearless exposition.

Turn now to the accompanying poetical work—the recent Poems and Ballads and the Songs before Sunrise. Enough, and perhaps more than enough, has been said of the faulty elements in them. But no work of Mr. Swinburne's is as satisfactory as this; to no work can we return again and again with equal pleasure. 'A Forsaken Garden,' despite a memory of the poetical method of Browning, has already won its place as a possession of all poetry readers, and that is a fact of more significance than the superfine young critics are wont to admit. Browning, again, has a finger in 'At a Month's End,' and the poem is over long; but it is not tiresome, and that allows one to see that it is fine. 'A Wasted Vigil' appears as the best expression of one of Mr. Swinburne's not too numerous poetical moods, which he is only too frequently repeating, and is fine also. But when we get to 'Ave atque Vale,' we get to something very like that rara avis in terris—a masterpiece. What a fortunate hour was that in which the essentials in him all met together and, calmed by death, spoke with