The poems that follow these four volumes are mixed work, half imaginative, half intellectual. Sometimes both kinds are found, separated, in the same poem; sometimes in one volume half the poems will be imaginative and the other half not. Could the imaginative and intellectual elements have now been fused as they were in his earlier work, it were well; but they were not. They worked apart. His witful poems are all wit, his analytical poems are all analysis, and his imaginative poems, owing to this want of fusion, have not the same intellectual strength they had in other days. _Numpholeptos_, for instance, an imaginative poem, full too of refined and fanciful emotion, is curiously wanting in intellectual foundation. The _Numpholeptos_ is in the volume entitled _Pacchiarotto, and how he worked in Distemper_. Part of the poems in it are humorous, such as _Pacchiarotto_ and _Filippo Baldinucci_, excellent pieces of agreeable wit, containing excellent advice concerning life. One reads them, is amused by them, and rarely desires to read them again. In the same volume there are some severe pieces, sharply ridiculing his critics. In the old days, when he wrote fine imaginative poetry, out of his heart and brain working together, he did not mind what the critics said, and only flashed a scoff or two at them in his creation of Naddo in _Sordello_. But now when he wrote a great deal of his poetry out of his brain alone, he became sensitive to criticism. For that sort of poetry does not rest on the sure foundation which is given by the consciousness the imagination has of its absolute rightness. He expresses his needless soreness with plenty of wit in _Pacchiarotto_ and in the _Epilogue_, criticises his critics, and displays his good opinion of his work--no doubt of these later poems, like _The Inn Album_ and the rest--with a little too much of self-congratulation. "The poets pour us wine," he says, "and mine is strong--the strong wine of the loves and hates and thoughts of man. But it is not sweet as well, and my critics object. Were it so, it would be more popular than it is. Sweetness and strength do not go together, and I have strength." But that is not the real question. The question is--Is the strength poetical? Has it imagination? It is rough, powerful, full of humanity, and that is well. But is it half prose, or wholly prose? Or is it poetry, or fit to be called so? He thinks that _Prince Hohenstiel_, or _Red Cotton Nightcap Country_, are poetry. They are, it is true, strong; and they are not sweet. But have they the strength of poetry in them, and not the strength of something else altogether? That is the question he ought to have answered, and it does not occur to him.