A more interesting and far superior example of the class of thoughtful poets was Richard Henry, or, as he called himself in later life, Richard Hengist Horne. Horne was a man of versatile talent who, after an adventurous youth in which he saw something of warfare and passed through many adventures on the coasts of America and, at a later date, in the Australian bush, settled down to a literary life. His first memorable works were two tragedies, _Cosmo de' Medici_ and _The Death of Marlowe_, both published in the year 1837. A third tragedy, _Gregory VII._, appeared in 1840. Horne's dramas are thoughtful, and they have the vigour which marked his own character. Yet Horne seems to have felt that there was something not wholly satisfactory in his dramatic work, and, except _Judas Iscariot_ (1848), his more noteworthy writings in later days are either prose, or lyrical verse, or epic blank verse. He is best known by _Orion, an Epic Poem_ (1843). It is an epic with a philosophic groundwork, 'intended,' as the author himself explains, 'to work out a special design, applicable to all time, by means of antique or classical imagery and associations.... Orion, the hero of my fable, is meant to present a type of the struggle of man with himself, _i.e._, the contest between the intellect and the senses.' Horne sarcastically hinted his sense of the improbability that such a poem would find a sale by publishing the first three editions at a farthing, with the explanation that he did so 'to avoid the trouble and greatly additional expense of forwarding presentation copies.' _Orion_ is Horne's masterpiece. The philosophic thought clogs the epic movement, but the thought is weighty enough, and expressed with sufficient terseness and force, to be worthy of attention for its own sake. The verse is almost always good and sometimes excellent. Horne is indebted more to Keats than to anyone else. Sometimes he appears to echo him consciously; at other times the reminiscence is probably unconscious. But as Horne was always a bold and original thinker his discipleship was altogether good for him. The sonorous quality of his verse is partly due to his model; the meaning remains his own. [Sidenote: William Barnes (1801-1886).]