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 were gradually added, and in the collective edition of the poet's works in 1877 the whole took shape as 'The Unknown Eros and other Odes' (another edit. 1878 ; 3rd edit. 1890), forty-two odes in two books. It is not likely that these will ever attain the popularity eventually won by 'The Angel in the House,' nor are they nearly so well adapted for ' human nature's daily food.' But they frequently exhibit the poet at greater heights than he had reached before, or without them would have been deemed capable of reaching ; and the lofty themes and fine metrical form have in general acted as an antidote to his worst defect, his tendency to lapse into prose. The effusions of inward feeling, frequently most pathetic in expression, and the descriptions of external nature, of mirrorlike fidelity, are alike admirable, and often transcendently beautiful. The weak parts are the expressions of political and ecclesiastical antipathies, mere splenetic outbursts alike devoid of veracity and of dignity ; and a few mystical pieces in which, endeavouring to express things incapable of expression, the poet has only accumulated glittering but frigid conceits. The gulf between 'The Angel in the House' and the 'Odes' is partly filled by 'Amelia,' first published in 1878, an exquisite little idyll akin to the former in subject, and to the latter in metrical structure, and not unjustly esteemed by the author his most perfect work. He meditated a much more ambitious poem, which, taking the Virgin for its theme, was to have embodied his deepest convictions on things divine and human. Finding the necessary inspiration denied, he recorded his thoughts in a prose volume entitled 'Sponsa Dei,' which he ultimately destroyed, professedly upon a hint from a Jesuit that he was divulging to the uninitiated what was intended for the elect, but in reality, no doubt, because he had failed to satisfy himself; and partly, perhaps, from apprehension of censure in his own communion. His relations with the church of which he had become a member were curious ; he detested and despised her official head in his own country, abused the priesthood as individuals, and made no point of the pope's temporal power, while he performed four pilgrimages to Lourdes, and desired to be buried in the garb of a Franciscan friar. There can be no question of the perfect sincerity of his Roman catholic profession, and as little that this was but the exterior manifestation of the mysticism which, as he tells us in an interesting autobiographical fragment, had possessed his being from his youth. Patmore's latter years passed in tranquillity, except for family bereavements. In 1880 he lost his second wife, in memory of whom he erected an imposing Roman catholic church at Hastings, designed by Mr. Basil Champneys, afterwards his biographer. In 1882 his daughter Emily died, and in 1883 his son Henry (see below). In 1881 he married Miss Harriet Robson, by whom he had a son. In 1891 a change in the ownership of his Hastings residence obliged him to remove, and he settled at Lymington. His poetical works had been definitively collected in 1886, with a valuable appendix on English metrical law, enlarged from an early essay in the 'North British Review.' In 1877 he wrote a memoir of his old friend Bryan Waller Procter [q. v.], at the desire of Mrs. Procter. About 1885 he became a frequent contributor of essays and reviews to the 'St. James's Gazette,' then edited by his intimate friend, Mr. Frederick Greenwood. Selections from these contributions, with additions from other sources, were published in 1889 and 1893, under the respective titles of 'Principle in Art' and 'Religio Poetae.' In 1895 Patmore published 'Rod, Root, and Flower,' observations and meditations, chiefly on religious subjects, which probably embody much of the destroyed 'Sponsa Dei.' He died at Lymington after a brief attack of pneumonia on 26 Nov. 1896.

Patmore's character was curiously unlike the idea of it generally derived from 'The Angel in the House.' Instead of an insipid amiability, his dominant characteristic was a rugged angularity, steeped in Rembrandt-like contrasts of light and gloom. Haughty, imperious, combative, sardonic, he was at the same time sensitive, susceptible, and capable of deep tenderness. He was at once magnanimous and rancorous ; egotistic and capriciously generous ; acute and credulous ; nobly veracious and prone to the wildest exaggerations, partly imputable to the exuberance of his quaint humour. His capacity for business was as remarkable as his intellectual strength, and was not like this warped and flawed by eccentricity. This inequality of character is reflected in his poetry. No one had sounder views on the laws of art, no one strove more earnestly after worthiness of subject and unity of impression, and yet the themes of all his objective poems are trivial orunsuited to his purpose, and his subjective pieces, with few exceptions, attract chiefly by the beauty of isolated details. He was the last man to write, as he aspired to do, the poem of his age, but no contemporary poet offers such a multitude of thoughts 'as clear as truth, as strong as light,' and descriptions of exquisite charm and photo-