That it should be needful here to state that Mr. Wells is the author of a great poem in the dramatic form, entitled Joseph and his Brethren, and published many years since, is a disgrace to our best and leading reviewers . . . . . . Of the noble poem of Mr. Wells one personally but a stranger to him can say, with a fervid conviction of the truth of his assertion, that to go from the Paradise Lost, the Samson Agonistes, the Antony and Cleopatra, to not few passages and scenes of Joseph and his Brethren, is but to sail in spirit down one and the same stream of sublime, subtle, and unsurpassed poetry."
So I came to know of Charles Wells. Here however of Joseph and his Brethren I have not to speak, and Mr. Swinburne's prefatory note, to the reprint of the drama in 1876, leaves no occasion for words of supplementary admiration. My business is with the Stories after Nature, a more important book than is suggested by Mr. Swinburne's description of it as "a puny
