alarm for the safety of Milton, but we knew that English Literature
had been enriched. Stephen Phillips is among the English poets.

His career extended over the space of twenty-five years, from the
first publication of _Marpessa_ in 1890 to his death on the ninth
of December, 1915. He was born near the city of Oxford, on the
twenty-eighth of July, 1868. His father, the Rev. Dr. Stephen
Phillips, still living, is Precentor of Peterborough Cathedral; his
mother was related to Wordsworth. He was exposed to poetry germs at
the age of eight, for in 1876 his father became Chaplain and Sub-Vicar
at Stratford-on-Avon, and the boy attended the Grammar School. Later
he spent a year at Queens' College, Cambridge, enough to give him the
right to be enrolled in the long list of Cambridge poets. He went on
the stage as a member of Frank Benson's company, and in his time
played many parts, receiving on one occasion a curtain call as the
Ghost in _Hamlet_. This experience--with the early Stratford
inspiration--probably fired his ambition to become a dramatist. The
late Sir George Alexander produced _Paolo and Francesca_;
_Herod_ was acted in London by Beerbohm Tree, and in America by
William Faversham. Neither of these plays was a failure, but it is
regrettable that he wrote for the stage at all. His genius was not
adapted for drama, and the quality of his verse was not improved by
the experiment, although all of his half-dozen pieces have occasional
passages of rare loveliness. His best play, _Paolo and
Francesca_, suffers when compared either with Boker's or
D'Annunzio's treatment of the old story. It lacks the stage-craft of
the former, and the virility of the latter.

Phillips was no pioneer: he followed the great tradition of English
poetry, and must be counted among the legitimate heirs. At his best,