Page:Four Victorian poets; a study of Clough (IA fourvictorianpoe00broorich).pdf/20

 repeated forms of the same idea to express the idea and never lucidly expressing it, was never dominated by the mastery of art crying to him, "Choose the best form and reject the rest." The Bride's Tragedy has not stuff enough in it to furnish more than a single act, and it is thinned out into five. There are a few fine passages, but not a single perfect one, and the passion in it is torn to rage. As to Death's Jest Book, it is a chaos of crude elements, huddled together, with some noble things ill expressed contained in it, but chiefly made up of those bitter playings of his diseased fancy with death and its revolting forms, which prophesied his insanity, and which, whenever they predominate in poetry of any time, proclaim the death of that poetry. For life, and the will to live eagerly, are the breath and fire of poetry.

His lyrics have been highly praised. They are based on Shelley, and on the lyrics of the Elizabethan Dramatists which Lamb's Specimens had now brought into prominence—a book which touched Darley as well as Beddoes, and was a mighty power in Charles Wells. But the lyrics of Beddoes have not enough in them either of humanity or of Nature. The best of them are the lightest, those thrown off in a moment of impulsive fancy. Of the poems, the one I like best is on the story of Pygmalion, a close imitation, even to the tricks of rhythm, of Keats's Endymion.

Charles Darley has been classed among the imitators of Shelley, but not quite justly. An Irishman, born