agony, if haply they may bring him back not life but forgiveness at her hands. Dying herself of anguish with him and with the molten figure of her making, she will remit nothing of her great revenge; body and soul of both shall perish in one fourfold death: and her answers pass, ever more and more bitter and ardent, through the harmless mouthpiece of a child. How the tragic effect is enforced and thrown out into fiery relief by this intervention of the boy-brother it needs no words, where none would be adequate, to say. I account this one of the artist's very highest reaches of triumphant poetry; he has but once in this book matched it for pathos, and but once for passion: for pathos in "Jenny," for passion in "Eden Bower." It is out of all sight or thought of comparison the greatest ballad in modern English; and perhaps not very far below it, and certainly in a high place among the attempts in that way of living Englishmen, we might class Mr. George Meredith's pathetic and splendid poem of "Margaret's Bridal-Eve."
There is exquisite grace of colour and sweetness in "The Staff and Scrip," with passages that search and sound pure depths of sentiment, and with interludes of perfect drawing; witness the sweet short study of the Queen sitting by her loom: but the air of the poem is too remote and refined for any passionate interest.
The landscape of "Stratton Water" is as vivid and thorough as any ballad can show; but some may wish it had been more or less of a compromise in style between old and new: it is now a study after the old manner too close to be no closer. It is not meant for a perfect and absolute piece of work in the old Border fashion, such as
