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132 they do not reach to the high level of this one, are yet distinctly admirable. Such are the verses 'In Memory of Barry Cornwall,' 'Inferiæ,' 'A Ballad of François Villon,' 'Song,' 'Choriambics,' 'At Parting,' and the 'Dedication.' But even in these the old complaint has to be made of want of artistic self-restraint, want of the sense of perfect parts in a perfect whole. There is scarcely a poem in the book from which some lovely or splendid snatch of song cannot be taken, but the nucleus inspiration is so often lost in a side-play of colour, scent, and sound. Take 'A Ballad of Dreamland,' for instance: the first verse so beautiful, the others all beaten out, till high pleasure is swallowed up in vague disappointment. The translations from Villon are excellent. But the fatal facility comes out in the French and Latin poetry and the sonnets. It is the fashion at present to praise Mr. Swinburne's sonnets, but they are not the real thing. They are brilliant and hard, intense and artificial, mere tours de force, without genuine vitality or permanence. And the same must be said of almost all his French efforts. He declares once of Gautier that 'sa parole de marbre et d'or avait le son.' Something of the same sort of thing has happened here. Charming, however, is such verse as that 'Ad Catullum,' and sweet such verse as this from the 'Nocturne':