Mr. Hawker was a poet of no mean order. His “Quest of the Sangreal,” which is his most ambitious composition, is a poem of great power, and contains passages of rare beauty. It is unfortunate that he should have traversed the same ground as the Poet Laureate. The “Holy Grail” of the latter has eclipsed the “Quest” of the vicar of Morwenstow. But, if the two poems be regarded without previous knowledge of the name of their composers, I am not sure that some judges would not prefer the masterpiece of the Cornish poet to a piece in which Lord Tennyson scarcely rises to his true level. In his “Quest of the Sangreal” alone does the vicar of Morwenstow show his real power. His ballads are charming; but a ballad is never, and can never be, a poem of a high order; it is essentially a popular piece of verse, without any depth of thought; pleasing by its swing and spirit, but not otherwise a work of art or genius. Mr. Hawker was too fond of the ballad. His first successes had been won in that line, and he adhered to it till late. A few sonnets rise to the level of sonnets, also never a very exalted one. His “Legend of St. Cecily” and “St. Thekla,” somewhat larger poems, are pleasing; but there is nothing in them which gives token of there lying in the breast of the Cornish vicar a deep vein of the purest poetical ore. That was revealed only by the publication of “The Quest of the Sangreal,” which rose above the smaller fry of ballads and sonnets as an eagle above the songsters of the grove. And yet this poem, belonging to the first order, as I am disposed to regard it, is disappointing—there is not enough of it. The poem is charged with ideas, crowded with conceptions full of beauty; but it is a torso, not a complete statue. The subject of the poem is the Sangreal[37], the true blood of Christ, gathered by Joseph of Arimathea in a golden goblet from the side of the Saviour as He hung on the cross. This precious treasure he conveyed to Britain, and settled with it at Avalon, or Glastonbury. There it remained till Evil days came on, And evil men: the garbage of their sin Tainted this land, and all things holy fled. The Sangreal was not. On a summer eve The silence of the sky brake up in sound; The tree of Joseph glowed with ruddy light; A harmless fire curved like a molten vase Around the bush—— and all was gone.