borders of the Land of Weary-men. But he seems to have been aware of
this danger, and to have conquered it. He meets it by the immense
variety of the subjects he chooses, and of the scenery in which he
places them. I do not think he ever repeats any one of his examples,
though he always repeats his theory. And the pleasant result is that we
can either ignore the theory if we like, or rejoice over its universal
application, or, beyond it altogether, be charmed and excited by the
fresh examples alone. And they are likely to charm, at least by variety,
for they are taken from all ages of history; from as many diverse phases
of human act, character and passion as there are poems which concern
them; from many periods of the arts; from most of the countries of
Europe, from France, Germany, Spain, Italy, (rarely from England,) with
their specialised types of race and of landscape; and from almost every
class of educated modern society. Moreover, he had a guard within his
own nature against the danger of this monotony. It was the youthful
freshness with which, even in advanced age, he followed his rapid
impulses to art-creation. No one was a greater child than he in the
quickness with which he received a sudden call to poetry from passing
events or scenes, and in the eagerness with which he seized them as
subjects. He took the big subjects now and then which the world expects
to be taken, and treated them with elaborate thought and steadfast
feeling, but he was more often like the girl in his half-dramatic poem,
whom the transient occurrences and sights of the day touched into song.
He picked up his subjects as a man culls flowers in a mountain walk,
moved by an ever-recurring joy and fancy in them--a book on a stall, a
bust in an Italian garden, a face seen at the opera, the market chatter
of a Tuscan town, a story told by the roadside in Brittany, a picture in
some Accademia--so that, though the ground-thought might incur the
danger of dulness through repetition, the joy of the artist so filled
the illustration, and his freshness of invention was so delighted with