Page:The Poet's Chantry pg 114.jpg

114 scarcely have been less than a sundering of the poet's very life. And then there was Henry, Patmore's third son, whose brief novitiate of pain and promise came to a close in 1883. His little bark had never been very seaworthy, yet in spite of serious illness he left poetic fragments of decided beauty and originality. "At twenty years of age, his spiritual and imaginative insight were far beyond those of any man I ever met," Coventry declared; and it was his belief that had the boy lived to maturity his poetic achievement might have surpassed his own.

The decade commencing in 1884 Patmore devoted to a series of varied and stimulating prose essays, contributed mainly to the St.James's Gazette. Politics, religion, economics, art, literature, architecture, were in turn touched upon with powerful and trenchant originality. The most significant of these critiques were subsequently collected, partially in Principle in Art, 1889, partially in that precious volume, Religio Poetæ, 1893. A little book of pregnant aphorisms and brief, unequal essays, The Rod, the Root, and the Flower, closed this prose sequence in 1895.

Meanwhile the Twilight of the Gods was drawing apace upon this inspired and imperious spirit. Flashes of comfort there were, indeed—the devoted companionship of Harriet Robson, who became our poet's third wife, and that little late-born son, Epiphanius. In the friendship of Mrs. Meynell, too, Patmore found throughout these latter years one of God's best gifts, an exquisite community of ideals. One of his latest essays was an appreciation of her own work both in prose and verse; and through her he came into close touch with her friend Francis Thompson, helping on the critical world to a recognition of his genius.