Page:Doom of the Great City - Hay - 1880.djvu/55



“That Mr. Payne’s are replete with that indefinable light that never was on sea or land may safely be asserted If fault be found with ‘Thorgerda’—doubtless Payne’s chef d’oeuvre—it will be for its super-affluence of splendour and description His compactness of form and distinctness of meaning leave little to be desired ‘The Ballad of Isobel’ disputes the palm of excellence with ‘Thorgerda,’ and with the many will, doubtless, gain the preference. In tone and form it is the opposite of ‘Thorgerda,’ being as cold, chaste, and simple as that is warm and voluptuous.”—The Academy.

“In his ‘Ballad of Isobel,’ again, there are strains of such old-world music as but few can produce nowadays, especially in the concluding verses, which are simply exquisite, and would have been enough to establish their author’s reputation if he had never written another line ‘Salvestra,’ which is by far the finest poem in the book, must be commended equally for the simple beauty of its verse and for the admirable tact with which a somewhat risqué subject has been treated. It would have been easy, for instance, to infuse an element of coarseness into the passage where Girolamo sees his unconscious love undressed, but Mr. Payne has made it only pathetic and beautiful.”—Morning Post.

“Mellifluous, entrancing, sensuous, Mr. Payne’s poetic effusions possess magical charms for gentle readers of languid temperament and amorous sensibilities. As great a master of song as Swinburne and Rossetti, and of the same school his warblings, most musical, most melancholy, enchant the ear, and beguile the heart with fancy-drawn raptures Mr. Payne’s powers are of their kind unsurpassed—perhaps unequalled. Love is their theme, love melodious, sad and plaintive, like the amorous descants of the nightingale, or the dulcet murmurings of fountains of sweet waters.”—Civil Service Gazette.

“Cette ‘Salvestré,’ occupant un tiers du volume, est l’histoire d’amour la plus terrible et la plus délicieuse qu’on puisse lire.”—, dans le National.

“Here is a man who is cultured to a point of exquisiteness that is phenomenal; he has simply a perfect command of our language, and makes light of difficulties that would have frightened the great ones of the past time; his musical sense is faultless.”—Vanity Fair.