We do not deny many gifts to certain members of the school. Swinburne, for instance, seems capable of playing with words as he pleases, of turning and tuning them into any form of melodious rhythm. But he begins and ends with _words_. Dante Gabriel Rossetti has given us some massive fragments, but nothing more. We look and say, “How much this man might have done!” but there our admiration ceases. Morris has written much and well, but he teases one with the antique. Set Byron by the side of any or all of them, and at once they dwindle almost into insignificance. Yet Byron wrote much that was worthless. He wrote, however, more that was really great. He never played tricks with words; he never allowed them to master him. He began the _Childe Harold_ in imitation of Spenser; but he soon struck out so freely and vigorously that, though it may be half heresy to say it, Spenser himself was left far in the rear, and we believe that any intelligent jury in these days would award a far higher prize to the _Childe Harold_ than to the _Faerie Queen_. Byron was a born poet. Like all great poets, undoubtedly, he owed much to art; but then art was always his slave. He rose above it. The fault with our present poets, not excepting even Tennyson, is that they are better artists than they are poets. Consequently, they win little cliques and knots of admirers, where others, as did Byron, win a world in spite of itself. It is all the difference between genius and the very highest respectability. Miss Rossetti we take to be a very good example of the faults and virtues of her school. Here is a volume of three hundred pages, and it is filled with almost every kind of verse, much of which is of the most fragmentary nature. Some of it is marvellously beautiful; some trash; some coarse; some the very breathing and inspiration of the deep religion of the heart. In her devotional pieces she is undoubtedly at her best. Surely a strong Catholic tradition must be kept alive in this family. Her more famous brother sings of the Blessed Virgin in a spirit that Father Faber might have envied, and in verse that Father Faber never could have commanded. How she sings of Christ and holy things will presently appear. But her other pieces are not so satisfactory. The ultra-melancholy tone, the tiresome repetitions of words and phrases that mark the school, pervade them. Of melancholy as of adversity it may be said, “Sweet are its uses,” provided “its uses” are not too frequent. An ounce of melancholy will serve at any time to dash a ton of mirth.