Of this pair, Sydney Dobell had some, and Alexander Smith had others, of the excuses which charity not divorced from critical judgment makes for imperfect poets. Dobell, with sufficient leisure for poetical production, had a rather unfortunate education and exceedingly bad health. Smith had something of both of these, and the necessity of writing for bread as well. Dobell, the elder of the two, and the longer lived, though both died comparatively young, was a Kentish man, born at Cranbrook on 5th April 1824. When he was of age his father established himself as a wine-merchant at Cheltenham, and Sydney afterwards exercised the same not unpoetical trade. He went to no school and to no University, privations especially dangerous to a person inclined as he was to a kind of passionate priggishness. He was always ill; and his wife, to whom he engaged himself while a boy, and whom he married before he had ceased to be one, was always ill likewise. He travelled a good deal, with results more beneficial to his poetry than to his health; and, the latter becoming ever worse, he died near Cheltenham on 22nd August 1874. His first work, an "Italomaniac" closet drama entitled _The Roman_, was published in 1850; his second, _Balder_, in 1853. This latter has been compared to Ibsen's _Brand_: I do not know whether any one has noticed other odd, though slight, resemblances between _Peer Gynt_ and Beddoes' chief work. The Crimean War had a strong influence on Dobell, and besides joining Smith in _Sonnets on the War_ (1855), he wrote by himself _England in Time of War_, next year. He did not publish anything else; but his works were edited shortly after his death by Professor Nichol.