Nothing is vainer than for criticism of poetry to suppose that it can give anything of the pleasure to be found in poetry itself. In making these notes about Victorian poetry, and in reading over again the work of the masters who wrote it, I am acutely aware how dismally inadequate any commentary upon such work must be. I am aware, also, that one could confront every generalisation that one makes with some modifying example; I have, for instance, since saying what I did about the love poetry of by-gone ages, been haunted by Bishop King’s exquisitely personal and touching _Exequy_ on his “dead saint.” But these exercises have their times, and they are at least an occasion for refreshing memories that are apt to become a little dulled even for the most loyal and industrious of us. Further, abstract theorising about art at least does the art no harm and may sometimes serve it. No one is likely to read the _Morte d’Arthur_ or the _Garden of Proserpine_ or the _Scholar Gipsy_ or _Pippa Passes_ with any more poetic delight for anything that he may find in this essay, but here and there a friendly mind may get a little pleasure of a real though less essential kind in considering for a moment, apart from the fundamental things of poetry that persist from one generation to another, what were the characteristics that distinguished an age, of which these are representative creations, from the other ages with which it has now taken an equal and immortal place. INDEX A Abercrombie, Lascelles, 19 Arnold, Matthew, 20, 21, 31, 32, 55, 66, 102, 109–114, 121–125, 134, 149, 151, 173, 210, 220, 228 Aytoun, William Edmondstoune, 169 B Beardsley, Aubrey, 143 Blake, William, 23, 24, 31, 211 Bottomley, Gordon, 20 Bridges, Robert, 107 Brontë, Emily, 219 Brooke, Stopford, 202 Brown, T. E., 143, 146 Browne, Thomas, 114 Browning, Robert, 22, 32, 55, 92–103, 109, 114–117, 119, 142–147, 153, 156, 173, 210, 212, 217, 220, 226, 228 Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, 22, 214, 220, 226, 227 Bunyan, John, 165 Burbage, Richard, 64 Burns, Robert, 49 Butler, Dr. (of Trinity), 202 Byron, Lord, 22, 26, 49, 54, 64, 77, 94, 96, 125, 200, 225 C Chapman, George, 51 Chaucer, Geoffrey, 35–37, 41, 56–59, 72, 74, 126, 131, 167, 170–173 Clough, Arthur Hugh, 104, 107 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 52 Collins, William, 23, 24, 44 Cory, William, 105 Crashaw, Richard, 17, 41, 219 D Dante, Alighieri, 223 Davies, W. H., 19 Disraeli, Lord Beaconsfield, 202 Dixon, Richard Watson, 106, 107 Domett, Alfred, 143, 145 Donne, John, 17, 31, 38, 78, 114, 212, 225 Dowson, Ernest, 143 Drayton, Michael, 215 Dryden, John, 17, 200 E Eliot, George, 202 F FitzGerald, Edward, 202, 207, 215–219, 228 G