remarks apply with primary force to that class of contemporary poets
who delight in the mystic and enigmatical, and whose ideas are so apt
to vanish, like Homer's heroes, in a cloud--among whom Robert Browning
and Philip J. Bailey are conspicuous names; and in a secondary degree
to that other class, lucid indeed in thought, and classically definite
in expression, but otherwise too scholastic and abstract for popular
sympathies--among whom we may cite Walter Savage Landor and Henry
Taylor. Coleridge[4] tells us that, to enjoy poetry, we must combine a
more than ordinary sympathy with the objects, emotions, or incidents
contemplated by the poet, consequent on rare sensibility, with a more
than ordinary activity of the mind in respect of the fancy and
imagination. This more than ordinary mental activity is especially
demanded from the readers--say rather the students--of _Philip van
Artevelde_ and its kindred dramas. Those who are thus equipped will
commonly be found to agree in admiring the writings of this author;
among them he is unquestionably 'popular,' if it be any test of
popularity to send forth a second edition three months after the
first. Scholarship can appreciate, pure intellect can find nutriment
in, his reflective and carefully-wrought pages. His heroes and
heroines, cold and unimpassioned to the man of society, are classic
and genial to the man of thought. A Quarterly Reviewer observes, that
the blended dignity of thought, and a sedate moral habit, invests his
poetry with a stateliness in which the drama is generally deficient,
and makes his writings illustrate, in some degree, a new form of the
art. In all that he writes he stands revealed the true English
gentleman, 'that grand old name,' as Tennyson calls it,

Defamed by every charlatan,
And soiled with all ignoble use.'