I feel myself a somewhat similar incongruity in the poet’s treatment of his more homely, modern, half-humorous themes, such as the introduction to the “Morte d’Arthur,” and “Will Waterproof;” not at all in the humorous poems, like the “Northern Farmer,” which are all of a piece, and perfect in their own vein. In this introduction we have “The host and I sat round the wassail bowl, then half-way ebb’d;” but this metaphorical style is not (fortunately) sustained, and so, as good luck would have it, a metaphor not being ready to hand, we have the honester and homelier line, “Till I tired out with cutting eights that day upon the pond;” yet this homespun hardly agrees with the above stage-king’s costume. And so again I often venture to wish that the Poet-Laureate would not say “flowed” when he only means “said.” Still, this may be hypercriticism. For I did not personally agree with the critic who objected to Enoch Arden’s fish-basket being called “ocean-smelling osier.” There is no doubt, however, that “Stokes, and Nokes, and Vokes” have exaggerated the poet’s manner, till the “murex fished up” by Keats and Tennyson has become one universal flare of purple. Beautiful as some of Mr. Rossetti’s work is, his expression in the sonnets surely became obscure from over-involution, and excessive _fioriture_ of diction. But then Rossetti’s style is no doubt formed considerably upon that of the Italian poets. One is glad, however, that, this time, at all events, the right man has “got the porridge!” In connection with “Morte d’Arthur,” I may draw attention again to Lord Tennyson’s singular skill in producing a rhythmical response to the sense. “The great brand Made lightnings in the splendor of the moon, And flashing round and round, and whirled in an arch.”