Then I look'd him in the eyes,
And I laugh'd full shrill at the lie he told
And the gnawing fear he would fain disguise.
It was true, what I'd time and again been told:
He was old--old.


There was, I felt, quite a swing about that first stanza--a joyous
and rollicking note of comradeship. The second was slightly
hysterical perhaps. But I liked the third: it was so bracingly
unorthodox, even according to the tenets of Soames' peculiar
sect in the faith. Not much `trusting and encouraging' here!
Soames triumphantly exposing the Devil as a liar, and laughing
`full shrill,' cut a quite heartening figure, I thought--then! Now,
in the light of what befell, none of his poems depresses me so
much as `Nocturne.'

I looked out for what the metropolitan reviewers would have to
say. They seemed to fall into two classes: those who had little
to say and those who had nothing. The second class was the
larger, and the words of the first were cold; insomuch that

Strikes a note of modernity throughout.... These tripping
numbers.--Preston Telegraph

was the only lure offered in advertisements by Soames'
publisher. I had hopes that when next I met the poet I could
congratulate him on having made a stir; for I fancied he was not
so sure of his intrinsic greatness as he seemed. I was but able to
say, rather coarsely, when next I did see him, that I hoped