There is a strange versatility in these books in unconsciously adopting peculiarities of other writers. The author himself, in his notes, acknowledged this, or rather detects himself after the fact, in a few instances; but though acute so far, he does not see half. More honest and unconscious imitation there never was, and just as the impression of the archetype rarely rose to a fact of consciousness, so the consequent resemblance seldom amounts to a traceable parallelism. There is no reproduction of passages, but of characteristics. A shade, a turn of phrase, a suggestion, a _soupçon_, as we read, recalls at once some great writer. The sonnets are full of subtle odors and flavors of Shakespeare, evanescent, intangible, and charming. There are also what the French would call "coincidences of style" with Coleridge, and often, especially in the May Carols, with Tennyson. Both are easily accounted for; the one by kindred tendencies to philosophy, the other by the strong likeness in plan to In Memoriam. But perhaps the most singular of all occurs in the very forcible poem called The Bard Etheil, which bears a curious resemblance to the poet of all poets the very opposite of De Vere--Robert Browning. There is nothing at all like this poem in all our author's works. It stands as saliently alone as a meteoric boulder in a meadow. The subject is an Irish bard, a relic of the bardic days, but a zealous convert to a Christianity of his own, tinged with a wild, ineradicable barbarism, whose outcroppings make the interest of the character. There is all Browning's sharp outline sketching, all his power of handling contradictions of character, yet none of the topsy-turvy words and sentences without which the Great Inversionist would not be himself;--in short, it is Browning with the constitutional gnarl in the grain left out. Another--a closer parallelism than usual--we find in The Year of Sorrow: "The weaver wove till all was dark. And long ere morning bent and bowed Above his work with fingers stark. And made, nor knew he made, a shroud." The terrible parallel passage in the Song of the Shirt is too familiar to need more than an allusion. Yet through all these coincidences runs an abundant individuality that proves De Vere to be anything but a wilful or even permissive plagiarist. He is, in simple truth, a great reader, with a mind in such true tune with all things high and refined, that it responds as the accordant string of some delicate instrument echoes a musical note. There needs no better test than this, that mere imitators invariably copy faults, while Mr. De Vere always reproduces excellences.