While were it so with the soul,--this gift of truth Once grasped, were this our soul's gain safe, and sure To prosper as the body's gain is wont,-- Why, man's probation would conclude, his earth Crumble; for he both reasons and decides, Weighs first, then chooses: will he give up fire For gold or purple once he knows its worth? Could he give Christ up were his worth as plain? Therefore, I say, to test man, the proofs shift, Nor may he grasp that fact like other fact, And straightway in his life acknowledge it, As, say, the indubitable bliss of fire. One of the functions of the poet is to awaken men and women to the knowledge of the delights of the mind, to give them life instead of existence. As Mr. Watson nobly expresses it, the aim of the poet "is to keep fresh within us our often flagging sense of life's greatness and grandeur." We can exist on food; but we cannot live without our poets, who lift us to higher planes of thought and feeling. The poetry of William Watson has done this service for us again and again. In 1884 appeared _Epigrams of Art, Life, and Nature_. I do not think these have been sufficiently admired. As an epigrammatist Mr. Watson has no rival in Victorian or in contemporary verse. The epigram is a quite definite form of art, especially cultivated by the poets in the first half of the seventeenth century. Their formula the terse expression of obscene thoughts. Mr. Watson excels the best of them in wit, concision, and grace; it is needless to say he makes no attempt to rival them as a garbage-collector. Of the large number of epigrams that he has contributed to English literature, I find the majority not only interesting, but richly stimulating. This one ought to please Mr. H. G. Wells: When whelmed are altar, priest, and creed; When all the faiths have passed; Perhaps, from darkening incense freed, God may emerge at last. This one, despite its subject, is far above doggerel: His friends he loved. His direst earthly foes-- Cats--believe he did but feign to hate. My hand will miss the insinuated nose, Mine eyes the tail that wagg'd contempt at fate. But his best epigrams are on purely literary themes: Your Marlowe's page I close, my Shakespeare's ope. How welcome--after gong and cymbal's din-- The continuity, the long slow slope And vast curves of the gradual violin!