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64 calamitous result. In this case the effect was a consistent restraint of the imaginative and emotional faculties, a philosophic aloofness from "life's beauteous nothings writ in dust"—in one word, preoccupation with the catechetical rather than the æsthetic aspect of life. That he contrived to put so much grace into sonnets on—let us say—"Church Discipline," "Evidences of Religion," the "Irish Constitution of 1872," that he so successfully linked temporary interests with the ultimate and universal in his "occasional" verses, is strongest evidence of his incorrigibly poetic nature. None the less, it is a relief to extricate from this mass of political and commemorative work that bearing the authentic hall-mark. Aubrey de Vere was a great artist; he was even a greater man. But alike by instinct and by conviction was he given to polemics. "I wish either to be considered as a teacher or as nothing," declared Wordsworth, his friend and most potential model; and one knows that every artist is a teacher according to the measure of truth within his soul. The danger lies in forgetting—or in ignoring—how much more he must also be.

But the poet does all things more graciously than other men, and de Vere's keen sense of beauty transfigured his didacticism even as the illuminator was wont to brighten with bird and flower the page of some old manuscript. One can forgive an occasional zeal in pointing morals to him whose message is summed up perfect, crystal-clear, in that memorably beautiful sonnet, "Sorrow":

Count each affliction, whether light or grave, God's messenger sent down to thee; do thou With courtesy receive him; rise and bow; And, ere his shadow pass thy threshold, crave Permission first his heavenly feet to lave; Then lay before him all thou hast: allow