that these ten lines contain more pure poetry than the entire works of Byron. And the same touch will be found not merely in the "Wolfram Dirge" mentioned-- If thou wilt ease thine heart Of Love and all its smart, Then sleep, dear, sleep. ... But wilt thou _cure_ thine heart Of Love and all its smart, Then die, dear, die-- but in several other dirges (for the dirge is the form natural to Beddoes), in the "Song from Torrismond," in "Love in Idleness," in the "Song on the Water" (which is pure early Tennyson), in the exquisite "Threnody," and in many other things. They have been called artificial: the epithet can be allowed in no other sense than in that in which it applies to all the best poetry. And they have the note, which only a few true but imperfect poets have, of anticipation. Shadows before, both of Tennyson and Browning, especially of the latter, appear in Beddoes. But after all his main note is his own: not theirs, not the Elizabethan, not Shelley's, not another's. And this is what makes a poet. As Beddoes' forte lay in short and rather uncanny snatches, so that of Richard Hengist Horne lay in sustained and dignified composition. He was not christened Hengist at all, but Henry. He had a curious life. In youth he knew Keats and Wells, having been, like them, at the private school of Mr. Clarke at Edmonton. He went to Sandhurst and was expelled for insubordination; joined the Mexican navy in the war of liberation; travelled widely; but seemed at about five and twenty to be settling down to literature and journalism in England. After writing various things, he produced in 1837 the fine but not quite "live" plays of _Cosmo de Medici_ and _The Death of Marlowe_, and in 1843 the famous farthing epic, _Orion_, which was literally published at a farthing. This was the smallest part of a great literary baggage of very unequal value. In 1852 Horne, resuming the life of adventure, went to Australia, served in the gold police, and stayed at the Antipodes till 1869. Then he came home again and lived for fifteen years longer, still writing almost to his very death on 13th March 1884.