has revealed itself to every lover under a new disguise. We cannot study old masters too much, for they, by their surprising divergence from one another, teach us to express ourselves in a way as novel as their own. They ask for our homage in passing, then to be forgotten in a new life which has no leisure for looking back. They say to us: worship your idol, and then turn your back on your idol; we also burned the idols of our fathers, that we might warm ourselves at a fire, and put heat into our blood, and be ready for the next stage of the journey.

Now the merit by which Mr Stephen Phillips has attracted attention is not the merit by which a new force reveals itself. It is not a new revelation of beauty; it is the tribute to an already worshipped beauty by which a delicate and sensitive nature, too reverent to be a lover, proclaims the platonic limitations of his affection.

The problem of Mr Stephen Phillips lies in the answer to two questions: what constitutes original poetry? and, what constitutes dramatic poetry? It is to the bar of these two questions that we propose to summon Mr Phillips.

First, let us state the case for the defence. Turning to the press-notices at the end of Mr Phillips' various volumes, we learn that, to the Daily Chronicle,' 'Christ in Hades' 'has the Sophoclean simplicity so full of subtle suggestion, and the Lucretian solemnity so full of sudden loveliness; and the result is Virgilian.' Mr Churton Collins, in the Pall Mall Gazette,' is sure that 'it may be safely said that no, poet has made his début, with a volume which is at once of such extraordinary merit and so rich in promise' as the Poems.' The Times' finds in it the indefinable quality which makes. for permanence'; the 'Globe,'' an almost Shakespearean tenderness and beauty.' 'Here is real poetic achievement-the veritable gold of song,' cries the 'Spectator'; and Literature' asserts that 'no man in our generation, and few in any generation, have written better than this.' The famous names brought in for incidental comparison, on hardly less than terms of equality, are, not only, as we have seen, Shakespeare, Sophocles, Lucretius, and Virgil, but also Dante, Milton, Landor, and Rossetti. OfPaolo and Francesca we are told by Mr William Archer in the Daily Chronicle that here' Mr Phillips has achieved the impossible. Sardou

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could not have ordered the action more skilfully, Tennyson could not have clothed the passion in words of purer loveliness.' In the Morning Post' Mr Owen Seaman tells us that Mr Phillips has written a great dramatic poem which happens also to be a great poetic drama. We are justified in speaking of Mr Phillips' achievement as something without parallel in our age.' Mr Churton Collins, in the Saturday Review,' says that, magnificent as was the promise of' the earlier poems, he' was not prepared for such an achievement as the present work.' He finds that it unquestionably places Mr Phillips in the first rank of modern dramatists and of modern poetry. It does more, it claims his kinship with the aristocrats of his art, with Sophocles and with Dante.' Mr Sidney Colvin, in the

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Nineteenth Century,' tells us that 'to the rich poetical production of the nineteenth century it seems' to him 'that Mr Phillips has added that which was hitherto lacking-notwithstanding so many attempts made by famous men-namely, a poetical play of the highest quality, strictly designed for, and expressly suited to, the stage.' Mr William Archer, in the World,' discovers in 'Herod' 'the elder Dumas speaking with the voice of Milton'; while the Daily Graphic,' the 'Globe,' and the 'Athenæum,' as with one voice, announce in it 'an intensity which entitles it to rank with the works of Webster and Chapman,' and assert that its grim imagination and fantasy may be compared with that of Webster,' and that 'it is not unworthy of the author of "The Duchess of Malfi." To the Morning Leader' it is 'splendidly opulent in conception; perfect in construction; far beyond all contemporary English effort in the aptitude of its verse to the subject and to the stage.' Of Ulysses' we have no press-notices at hand, but we see from an advertisement in the Westminster Gazette,' entitled 'Is modern poetry read?', that one London bookseller is said to have ordered three times as many copies as he would have taken of a new poem by Tennyson, four times as many as for one by Swinburne, six times as many as for one by Browning.' Let this end the case for the defence.

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Poetry is an act of creation which the poet shares with none other among God's creatures. Poetical feeling is a sensibility which the poet may share with the green

grocer walking arm-in-arm with his wife, in Hyde Park, at twilight on Sunday. To express poetical feeling in verse is not to make poetry. Poetical feeling can be rendered with varying success; it can be trained, improved, made the most of: poetry exists. But as there is nothing that has not been finely done that cannot be tamely copied, so in poetry we have continually before us copies or paraphrases which are often more successful in their appeal to the public than the originals which have inspired them. And, as all but the best judges in painting can be imposed upon by a finely executed copy of a masterpiece, so in poetry all but the best judges are often imposed upon by work done conscientiously and tastefully after good models. We can imagine the reader of Mr Phillips' Poems' pausing before a line or a passage, and saying, That has almost the ring of Landor. Another reader will go a step further, and say, It follows Landor so closely that it is as good as Landor. The third reader will content himself with saying, It is as good as Landor. And as he says it, you will not suspect what really lies at the root of the compliment; you will imagine to yourself something different from Landor, but as good as Landor in a different way.

Now Mr Phillips' poetry is of the kind that seems, when we hear it for the first time, to be vaguely familiar. We cannot remember where we have heard it; we cannot remember if we have heard it just as it is, or if it merely recalls something else. But we are at once disposed to say, It is poetry, because it reminds us of other poetry that we have read. There is a profound sense in which all poetry is alike; in which Villon may be recognised by his inner likeness, as well as by his outer unlikeness, to Homer, while Scott shall be discredited by his outer likeness, as well as by his inner unlikeness, to Homer. But the poetry that is at once recognised by its resemblance to other poetry must always be second-rate work, because it is work done at second-hand, work which has come into the world a foundling, and has had to adopt another man's house for its maintenance.

The most conspicuous influence on Mr Stephen Phillips in his 'Poems' is Tennyson, and not the mature Tennyson, but the Tennyson of Enone,' Tennyson at twenty-three. Take these lines, which represent the low average, hardly

that, of Enone,' and read them carefully, weighing all their cadences:

'O mother, hear me yet before I die.

Hath he not sworn his love a thousand times,
In this green valley, under this green hill,
Ev'n on this hand, and sitting on this stone?
Seal'd it with kisses? water'd it with tears?
O happy tears, and how unlike to these!

O happy Heaven, how canst thou see my face?
O happy earth, how canst thou bear my weight?
O death, death, death, thou ever-floating cloud,
There are enough unhappy on this earth,
Pass by the happy souls, that love to live :
I pray thee, pass before my light of life,
And shadow all my soul, that I may die.
Thou weighest heavy on the heart within,
Weigh heavy on my eyelids: let me die.'

Now read carefully these lines from 'Marpessa,' and weigh every cadence, comparing it with the cadences of Tennyson:

'I should expect thee by the Western bay,

Faded, not sure of thee, with desperate smiles,
And pitiful devices of my dress

Or fashion of my hair: thou wouldst grow kind;
Most bitter to a woman that was loved.

I must ensnare thee to my arms, and touch
Thy pity, to but hold thee to my heart.
But if I live with Idas, then we two

On the low earth shall prosper hand in hand
In odours of the open field, and live

In peaceful noises of the farm, and watch
The pastoral fields burned by the setting sun.
And he shall give me passionate children, not
Some radiant god that will despise me quite,
But clambering limbs and little hearts that err.'

But for the awkward line ending with the word 'quite,' it would be possible to read out those two passages and to puzzle the hearer as to which was Tennyson and which Mr Phillips. It may be said that we are paying Mr Phillips a high compliment by saying that his verse might be mistaken for the verse of Tennyson. Is it, after all, a compliment? Would it be a true compliment if we were able to quote from Mr Phillips lines resembling

these lines, which we take from one of the finer parts of 'Enone'?

"Then to the bower they came,

Naked they came to that smooth-swarded bower,

And at their feet the crocus brake like fire,

Violet, amaracus, and asphodel,

Lotos and lilies: and a wind arose.'

That is still Tennyson at twenty-three, a luscious and luxuriant Tennyson. But take him ten years later; take the concluding lines of Ulysses':

'We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.'

Even if, anywhere in Mr Phillips' work, we could find lines of that calibre exactly, so that they could be mistaken for those lines, would it be possible to commend Mr Phillips for any much greater achievement, because he had been able to do over again what Tennyson did well, than because he had been able to do over again what Tennyson did only moderately well? That is not the question. The question is, has this new poet killed the dragon of a literary tradition? has he brought the new life of a personal energy?

Poetry, we have said, is an act of creation; poetical feeling is a form of sensibility. Now in all Mr Phillips' verse we find poetical feeling; never the instant, inevitable, unmistakable thrill and onslaught of poetry. When Dante writes:

'Amor, che a nullo amato amar perdona';

when Shakespeare writes:

'O thou weed,

Who art so lovely fair, and smell'st so sweet,

That the sense aches at thee,-would thou hadst ne'er
been born!'

when Coleridge writes:

'She, she herself, and only she

Shone through her body visibly';