His essay on Poe is more sympathetic. He finds in Poe, not a false harmony, but a real discord--a pitiable discord. “There was a fatal separation,” we are told, “between his intellect and his emotions, except in a very few of his poems, because he could not value life or human nature in comparison with the life and the nature of that other planet for which he was homesick. So he exercised his intellect on games, but with a thwarted passion which gives a surprising interest and beauty even to his detective stories.” This is well said, but, as we read the essay, we become aware of a curious ultra-fastidiousness in Mr. Clutton-Brock--a lack of vulgarity, in the best sense of the word. We see this in his attitude to Poe’s most popular work; he dismisses _The Raven_ and _The Bells_ as “fit to be recited at penny readings.” That certainly has been their fate, but it does not prevent them from being masterpieces in their kind--the _jeux d’esprit_ of a planet-struck man. They are not, however, we may admit, the poems that reveal Poe as an inspired writer. It is a much more serious thing for Mr. Clutton-Brock to omit _Annabel Lee_ from the list of the six poems or so, on which Poe’s reputation as a poet rests. _Annabel Lee_ is a work of genius, if Poe ever wrote a work of genius. _Helen, Thy Beauty is to Me_--which has none of its faults--is the only one of his poems that challenges its supremacy, perhaps successfully. Mr. Clutton-Brock’s essay on the other hand, will be of service to the general reader if it gives him the feeling that Poe is to be approached, not as a hackneyed author, but as a writer of undiscovered genius. He does not exaggerate the beauty of _The Sleeper_, though he exaggerates its place in Poe’s work. The truth is, Poe is a neglected poet. The average reader regards him as too well known to be worth reading, and _The Sleeper_, _The City in the Sea_ and _Romance_ are ignored because _The Bells_ has fallen into the hands of popular reciters. Mr. Clutton-Brock has the happy gift of taking his readers into the presence of most of his authors in the spirit of discoverers. It is not that he aims at originality or paradox. He is always primarily in search of truth, even when he gets on a false scent. His essay on Meredith is a series of interesting guesses at truth, some of which are extremely suggestive, and some of which seem to me to miss the mark. The most suggestive is the remark that _Love in the Valley_ is not only written on “a theme that inspired the music of the first folk-songs,” but that the verse itself has “for its underlying tune” a folk-measure--the old Saturnian measure of the Romans. Macaulay, it may be remembered, was startled to learn that his ballad of “brave Horatius” was written largely in the Saturnian metre, and still more startled when he was unable to find any perfect example of this metre in English verse, except: The Queen was in her parlour, eating bread and honey.