in no uncertain tones not merely to juniors like Mr Morris and Mr
Swinburne but to seniors like Tennyson and Browning. But the actual
contents were more than reassuring. Of _Empedocles_ it is not
necessary to speak again: _Thyrsis_ could not but charm. The
famous line,

"And that sweet city with her dreaming spires,"

sets the key dangerously high; but it is kept by the magnificent
address to the cuckoo,

"Too quick despairer, wherefore wilt thou go?"

and the flower-piece that follows; by that other single masterpiece,

"The coronals of that forgotten time;"

by the more solemn splendour of the stanza beginning

"And long the way appears which seemed so short;"

by the Signal tree; and by the allegoric close with the reassertion of
the Scholar. All these things stand by themselves, hold their sure and
reserved place, even in the rush and crowd of the poetry of the
sixties, the richest, perhaps, since the time from 1805 to 1822.

_Saint Brandan_, which follows, has pathos if not great power,
and connects itself agreeably with those Celtic and mediæval studies
which had just attracted and occupied Mr Arnold. The sonnets which
form the next division might be variously judged. None of them equals