It goes without saying that little enough of this verse is dull: it nearly all has character, a distinct personal flavour in phrasing and motive. Yet this flavour is best known to the public in its development by the first of brilliant young men to be influenced by Mr. Belloc's style, as apart from his ideas. We may pause a moment to examine this point, for its own special interest and for the guide it will give us to Mr. Belloc's poetry. Rupert Brooke has been called too often the disciple of Dr. Donne: no critic, so far as we are aware, has called attention to his debt to Mr. Belloc. This debt was neither complete nor immediately obvious, but it existed. Brooke knew it, spoke of Mr. Belloc with admiration, and quoted his poems with surprising memory. Some of these were--necessarily--unpublished and may be apocryphal: they cannot be repeated here. The resemblance between the styles of the two men was most noticeable in Brooke's prose: his letters from America show a touch in working and a point of view singularly close to those of Mr. Belloc. But it is also to be discovered in his poetry. Put a few lines from _Grantchester_ beside a few lines from one of Mr. Belloc's poems of Oxford and you will realize how curiously the younger man was fascinated by the older. We will quote the passages we have in mind. The first is by Brooke: "In Grantchester, their skins are white, They bathe by day, they bathe by night; The women there do all they ought; The men observe the Rules of Thought. They love the Good; they worship Truth; They laugh uproariously in youth." And the second is from Mr. Belloc's _Dedicatory Ode_: "Where on their banks of light they lie, The happy hills of Heaven between, The Gods that rule the morning sky Are not more young, nor more serene.... ... We kept the Rabelaisian plan: We dignified the dainty cloisters With Natural Law, the Rights of Man, Song, Stoicism, Wine and Oysters." There is a difference, for two men of different character are speaking: but there is more than the accidental resemblance that comes from two men making the same sort of joke. But Brooke was, in his own desire and in the estimation of others, first a poet: and Mr. Belloc has written his verses, as it would seem, at intervals. The common level of them is that of excellent workmanship, the very best are simply glorious accidents. Now the common level, if we put away the books for children which will be more conveniently dealt with in another chapter, is represented by such poems as _The Birds_, _The Night_, _A Bivouac_, and a Song of which we may quote one verse, as follows: "You wear the morning like your dress And are with mastery crowned; When as you walk your loveliness Goes shining all around. Upon your secret, smiling way Such new contents were found, The Dancing Loves made holiday On that delightful ground."