Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/457

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Yet no good judge who watched how strenuously this still youthful genius was wrestling with the difficult and almost indomitable subject-matter of "Sordello" could help foreseeing its triumphant mastery over whatever it might undertake when its slow strong growth should be fully mature. To my mind this thorough maturity was reached in the two volumes of "Men and Women," published in 1855. There had been previous poems mature as well as great; but in this collection, distributed under various headings in the six-volume edition of 1868, I found, and find, all the leading pieces mature; the fire burns intensely clear, completely consuming its own smoke.