Page:Adams - Songs of the Army of the Night.djvu/29

 the last twelve years of his life, six of which (1884-1890) were spent in his visit to Australia. It is as a critic that he has received from his fellow-critics the largest share of praise, doubtless because there is of necessity a more cautious tone in that class of his writings, which gives satisfaction to the "balanced" literary mind. I venture, however, to think that the reviewers are wrong in this estimate of Francis Adams' powers; for his temperament was essentially of the emotional, and not the judicial order, and in spite of the singular brilliancy of certain of his judgments his keenly sensitive and subtle instinct was more often, and more fatally, at fault in his critical than in his poetical productions. On the value of his works as a whole, or of his complete poetical works, so unequal in their merit, it is perhaps too early to express an opinion; for some of his writings on which he himself set most store still remain to be published. But for my own part, I believe that it is in his more impassioned and unrestrained work, such as "Leicester, an Autobiography" and "The Songs of the Army of the Night," that we must look for his real masterpieces; for it is there alone that he wields the great imaginative quality, and the heart of fire, that can triumph over all superficial blemishes and defects.

At any rate we have here a volume of people's poems which deserves to rank with the memorable achievements of democratic literature. Once more, amidst the multitudinous parrot-cries of elegant versifying, comes the arresting call of one who has seen, and suffered, and sympathised a veritable human voice, which speaks direct to the heart of the listener as no "mere literature" has ever spoken. Whatever place may be ultimately assigned him among English authors, it is through these "Songs of the Army of the Night" that the name of Francis Adams will be best loved and longest remembered by the friends of social freedom.

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