The strength and the weakness of such a temperament are illustrated by his poetry, of which some fragments will probably survive (and few, indeed, are the poets who survive by more than fragments), though we may doubt the truth of his own opinion that they would supply his most lasting claim upon posterity. He explains, however, very frankly why he can never be a great poet. He is wanting, he says,[2] in the great poetic faculty—the 'power of metaphor and analogue—the instinctive vision of connections between all things in heaven and earth.' His mind, in other words, was deficient in the direction of philosophic imagination. He could not, like Milton, converse habitually with Him that yon soars on golden wing, Guiding the fiery-wheeled throne, The cherub Contemplation. He was too restless and impetuous to be at ease on those heights from which alone the widest truths become perceptible and excite the emotions which are at once deepest and calmest. His songs represent jets and gushes of vivid but rather feverish emotion. A pathetic or heroic story, or the beauty of some natural scene, moves him deeply, and he utters his emotion in an energetic burst of vivid language. But he is too short-winged for a long flight, or for soaring into the loftiest regions of the intellectual atmosphere. Every short lyric is the record, one must suppose, of some such mood of intense excitement. But it makes all the difference whether the excitement takes place in a mind already stored with thought, and ready to pierce instantaneously to the deepest meaning of a particular scene or incident, or in a mind incapable of sustained reflection, and accustomed to see things by brilliant flashes which reveal only their partial and superficial aspects. When, however, we do not blame Kingsley for not being somebody else, we must admit him to be excellent within his limits. The 'Andromeda' is in every way admirable. It is probably the most successful attempt in the language to grapple with the technical difficulties of English hexameters; and he also seems to find in the Pagan mythology a more appropriate symbol for his characteristic tone of sentiment, and an imagery which fits in better with his nature-worship than in regions more familiar to him. He can abandon himself unreservedly to his delight in the beautiful without bothering himself about the Manichees or showing the controversial theologian under the artistic dress. The shorter poems have generally a power of stamping themselves upon the memory, due, no doubt, to their straightforward, nervous style. They have the cardinal merit of vigour which belongs to all genuine utterance of real emotion, and are delightfully free from the flabby affectations of many modern rivals. The mark may not be the most elevated, but he goes at it as straight as he would ride at a fence. His 'North-Easter' does not blow from such ethereal regions as Shelley's 'Southwest Wind.' It