Doubtless there are competent critics of poetry in this country, but
it is Mr. Alfred Austin’s luck not to have drawn their attention. Mr.
Austin is not a great poet, but he is a poet. The head and front of his
offending seems to be that he is a lesser poet than his predecessor—his
immediate predecessor—for his austerest critic will hardly affirm his
inferiority to the illustrious Nahum Tate. Nor is Mr. Austin the equal
by much of Mr. Swinburne, who as Poet Laureate was impossible—or at
least highly improbable. If he had been offered the honor Mr. Swinburne
would very likely have knocked off the Prime Minister’s hat and
jumped upon it. He is of a singularly facetious turn of mind, is Mr.
Swinburne, and has to be approached with an orange in each hand.
Below Swinburne the differences in mental stature among British poets
are inconsiderable; none is much taller than another, though Henley
only could have written the great lines beginning,
Out of the dark that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul—
and he is not likely to do anything like that again; on that proposition
You your existence might put to the hazard and turn of a wager.
I wonder how many of the merry gentlemen who find a pleasure in making
mouths at Mr. Austin for what he does and doesn’t do have ever read, or
reading, have understood, his sonnet on