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Rh knows how, in the children of Alice and Wilfrid Meynell, Thompson found one of his inspirations. He has left, as a memorial of his love for them, the verses to his God-child, Francis Meynell; also a lovely fantasy, "The Making of Viola"; the whole of Sister Songs; "The Poppy"; and that uniquely haunting poem "To Monica Thought Dying," with its image of Death holding state among the little broken playthings, thrice in-tolerable with "this dreadful childish babble on his tongue." In a niche of its own must stand that exquisite "Ex Ore Infantium"—

of which no detached page can hope to reproduce the tender gaiety. It recalls nothing so much as one of Crashaw's divinely human touches, his marvelling

Manifestly, Thompson's viewpoint (the viewpoint of verses such as "Daisy" and "The Poppy") is very far from being a childlike one. But his are the musings of one who, having known the full measure of manhood—having known life and love and the grave—has still a heart meet for "the nurseries of Heaven."

We have already suggested the inevitable thing: and now, perforce, we remember that one of the first—yea, and one of the last—titles laid by appreciative critics at our poet's feet was, "the greater Crashaw." It is as deceptive as such generalisations have, in the main, proved