Stephen Phillips, William Watson, Alfred Noyes--each published his
first volume of poems at the age of twenty-two, additional evidence of
the old truth that poets are born, not made. Alfred Noyes is a
Staffordshire man, though his report of the county differs from that
of Arnold Bennett as poetry differs from prose. They did not see the
same things in Staffordshire, and if they had, they would not have
been the same things, anyhow. Mr. Noyes was born on the sixteenth of
September, 1880, and made his first departure from the traditions of
English poetry in going to Oxford. There he was an excellent
illustration of _mens sana in corpore sano_, writing verses and
rowing on his college crew. He is married to an American wife, is a
professor at Princeton, and understands the spirit of America better
than most visitors who write clever books about us. He has the
wholesome, modest, cheerful temperament of the American college
undergraduate, and the Princeton students are fortunate, not only in
hearing his lectures, but in the opportunity of fellowship with such a
man.

Mr. Noyes is one of the few poets who can read his own verses
effectively, the reason being that his mind is by nature both literary
and rhetorical--a rare union. The purely literary temperament is
usually marked by a certain shyness which unfits its owner for the
public platform. I have heard poets read passionate poetry in a
muffled sing-song, something like a child learning to "recite." The
works of Alfred Noyes gain distinctly by his oral interpretation of
them.

He is prolific. Although still a young man, he has a long list of
books to his credit; and it is rather surprising that in such a
profusion of literary experiments, the general level should be so