engaging.

Landor is great, too, but in another kind; the bees that hummed over
Plato's cradle have left their honey on his lips; none but Landor, or a
Greek, could have written this on Catullus:

"Tell me not what too well I know
About the Bard of Sirmio--
Yes, in Thalia's son
Such stains there are as when a Grace
Sprinkles another's laughing face
With nectar, and runs on!"

That is poetry deserving of a place among the rarest things in the
Anthology. It is a sorrow to me that I cannot quite place Praed with
Prior in my affections. With all his gaiety and wit, he wearies one at
last with that clever, punning antithesis. I don't want to know how

"Captain Hazard wins a bet,
Or Beaulieu spoils a curry"--

and I prefer his sombre "Red Fisherman," the idea of which is borrowed,
wittingly or unwittingly, from Lucian.

Thackeray, too careless in his measures, yet comes nearer Prior in
breadth of humour and in unaffected tenderness. Who can equal that song,
"Once you come to Forty Year," or the lines on the Venice Love-lamp, or
the "Cane-bottomed Chair"? Of living English writers of verse in the
"familiar style," as Cowper has it, I prefer Mr. Locker when he is tender
and not untouched with melancholy, as in "The Portrait of a Lady," and