It may be frankly and at once admitted that he has nothing exactly to match it. The once even more famous--and still perhaps not much less famous--_Sic Vita_, is not certainly his; and, though a fine thing, is very distinctly open to the metaphysical reproach of _playing with_ its subject too much--of that almost wilfully mechanical and factory-like conceit-mongering which reaches its extreme in Cleveland. If it is King's, 'The Dirge' is a sort of extended handling of it--less epigrammatic but more poetical, and brought down again to that _via media_ of metaphysicality which is King's special path. He is, in fact, a sort of Longfellow of this particular style and school of poetry--from the other side; a sort of Donne _in usum vulgi_. 'The Exequy' and 'The Elegy', 'Silence' and 'Brave Flowers', are all in this middle way; and perhaps his treading of it may be a reason why he has been comparatively neglected--the great vulgar not being grateful for poetry which never can fully please it, and the small wanting something more concentrated and '_above_ proof'. But even if he had not lacked complete presentment so long, such a collection as this would be manifestly incomplete without him. It has not, however, been thought necessary to include his verse translations of the Psalms, which form a separate volume, not much more successful than most of the attempts at that impossible task. With the admirable English of the Authorized or the Prayer-Book Versions at choice, and the admirable Latin of the Vulgate to fall back upon, nobody can want stuff like Earth is the Lord's with her increase, And all that there have place: He founded it upon the Seas, And made the floods her base.[3]