Page:Dictionary of National Biography. Sup. Vol III (1901).djvu/264

 Meanwhile neither private cares nor public interests had interrupted Patmore's poetical work. In 1858 he published 'Tamerton Church Tower,' which he had begun as early as 1848. Like his former productions, it is a narrative poem, and as such quite pointless and uninteresting, but full of exquisite vignettes of scenery. The volume, which reached a second edition in the same year, included revised versions of the poems of 1844 and new pieces, some of great beauty. Among these were specimens of 'The Angel in the House,' the long poem now occupying all the time and thought he could devote to it, and designed to be the apotheosis of married love. The first part, 'The Betrothal,' was published anonymously in 1854. The anonymity was owing to Patmore's alarm at the unfavourable reception of his father's book, 'My Friends and Acquaintance,' published earlier in the same year. The name alone, he fancied, would condemn him; although, as portions of the poem had already appeared in 'Tamerton Church Tower,' his precaution was in reality quite futile. It would have been wiser to disarm criticism by removing the numerous trivialities which disfigured a beautiful poem; but this could not be expected, for Patmore could not see them. He had no perception of the sublime in other men's writings or of the ridiculous in his own. The great writers whom he sincerely admired were admired by him for any other quality than their grandeur ; and although the reverse of conceited as regarded his own works, and continually labouring to amend their defects, the worst defect they had was never admitted by him. Although, however, the 'Angel's' occasional lapses into bathos afforded a handle to detractors, the voice of the higher criticism was always for it. Tennyson, Browning, Ruskin, Carlyle were lavish of sincere praise, and even its commercial success (though the author himself was disappointed) was greater than could have been reasonably expected in the case of a book so entirely original and so devoid of meretricious allurement. 'The Betrothal' was followed in 1856 by 'The Espousals' (new editions of both parts appeared in 1858, 1863 two ed., and 1866) ; in 1860 by 'Faithful for Ever,' a poem of disappointed love ; and in 1862 by 'The Victories of Love,' a poem of bereavement. In the collected edition of his works 'Faithful for Ever' was amalgamated with 'The Victories of Love.' It must be said that the quality of poetical achievement went on decrescendo, though there are exceedingly fine things in 'Faithful for Ever.' The four poems nevertheless constitute among them such a body of deep and tender and truly poetical thought on love and lovers, embellished with charming pictures of English scenery and household life, as no other poet has given us. The obvious and unanswerable criticism is that the poet's professed subject of married life is only approached in the least successful parts of the poem, and hardly grappled with even there. The reason is plain: its domesticities were found incapable of poetical treatment.

If Patmore retained any desire to pursue the subject of connubiality further, it must have been checked by his irreparable loss in the death of his wife on 5 July 1862. She had long been sinking from consumption, and her life had been prolonged only by his devoted care. She left him three sons and three daughters. His feelings found an inadequate expression in 'The Victories of Love, but he had reached the turning-point of his career, and the break with his past was irreparable. He went abroad for his health, embraced (1864) the Roman catholic religion, which he would probably have professed many years earlier but for the influence of his wife, and found a second mate in Marianne Caroline Byles (b. 23 June 1822), a lady of noble though reserved manners, and singular moral excellence. His family followed his example, and with the exception of two sons old enough to go forth into life, and a daughter who after a while entered a convent, remained under his roof. He retired from the British Museum, and, after short residences in Hampstead and Highgate, bought the estate to which he gave the name of Heron's Ghyll, near Uckfield in Sussex. This he so improved by building and planting as to be able after some years to dispose of it at a greatly enhanced price. He then settled at The Mansion, Hastings, a fine old house which had attracted his fancy when a child. Tranquillity and retirement had brought back the poetical impulse; in 1868 he had printed for private circulation nine odes, remarkable alike for their poetry and for their metrical structure, or rather, perhaps, their musical beauty in the absence of definite metrical form. They may be regarded as rhythmical voluntaries, in which the length of the lines and the incidence of the rhymes are solely determined by the writer's instinctive perception of the requirements of harmony, and the rich and varied music thusattained contrasted no less strikingly with the metrical simplicity of 'The Angel in the House' than did the frequent loftiness of the thoughts and audacity of the diction with the quiet feeling and unostentatious depth of the earlier work. Other similar compositions