successes, is yet lifted by its dignity and austerity as high and higher than that of many professional saints. The message that we are in need of is something that will introduce the loving simplicity of the Christian Revelation into the world of beauty; for, comprehensive as that revelation claims to be, it is difficult to define the exact place in the Christian economy which is reserved for hearts haunted by the tyrannical instinct of beauty. Such a life as Blake's is an attempt at the reconciliation of the matter. He seems to get nearer the divine principle than many professed religionists; as he himself wrote, "I have laboured hard indeed, and been borne on angels' wings." THE POETRY OF KEBLE IT is a difficult matter to criticise a religious poet from a purely literary standpoint. There was a curious instance of this last year. When the Keats Memorial was unveiled at Hampstead, Mr. Gosse spoke some disrespectful words of Kirke White. There followed a short sharp controversy in the _Standard_ on the subject. The defenders of Kirke White's position as a poet, based their arguments, as far as I can remember, on the grounds (1) that he was a good Christian, (2) that he might have been Senior Wrangler, (3) that he was the victim of an early death. The facts themselves, or rather the facts in combination, may certainly be said to invest Kirke White with a romantic interest. Southey, indeed, felt this so strongly that he wrote a memoir of the young man, and edited his Remains. But any one who will now study Kirke White's poems in themselves, as literature, without prejudice, must inevitably come to the conclusion that they are worthless, and disfigured by every fault that can be laid to the charge of poetry. They are not even promising. They are tedious, grotesque, inharmonious, dull. And yet they have a place in the Aldine edition of British poets. No one would, of course, dream of classing Keble with Kirke White. Keble was a wise, able, devoted man, narrow-minded, no doubt, and timid in thought, if not in action. Not imaginative nor vivid, but intensely affectionate, dutiful, and reserved; a lover of Nature, scenery, friends, children, reflection; somewhat melancholy, no doubt, and not growing in hopefulness as years went by--with little independence of thought or character; but reverent, a lover of precedent, and authority, and things established. Altogether a wholesome, valuable man, like Telemachus in Tennyson's "Ulysses," of a type of which Englishmen may be proud; but not a man who can be called interesting or romantic in any degree; even Mr. Lock, who has written his life in a lucid style, and with pious discretion, would admit that.