word: it was all part of the old world's tragedy that
Should prosper and the porcelain break in two.
So Lionel Johnson was carried to St. Bartholomew's Hospital, where he whom the world had taught weariness slept for four long days and nights. Then, early in the morning of 4 October, 1902, he awakened in Eternity.
Were it not for the poems, it would be difficult to connect this reticent, fragile struggler with life—always a pathetic and lovable figure—with the serenely impersonal man of letters known to London journalism. But his own hand has bridged the abyss; through his poetical work may we trace the author's spiritual pilgrimage with no great incompleteness. It is not that the pages are frequently autobiographical—it is simply that both choice of theme and treatment are essentially characteristic. Some of the earliest of these poems show the strong influence of Classical literature: "Sertorius" is one instance, and "Julian at Eleusis," that plaintive elegy upon the death of pagan worship, is another. But "The Classics," with its brief and trenchant appreciation of the Greek and Latin writers, is the most complete expression of a culture which very largely moulded Johnson's own literary style. Upon every page of his work lies this stamp of scholarship; one recognises it in the exquisite, unobtrusive chiselling of his verse-effects, but even more fundamentally in his graceful ordering of ideas and his masterly control of passion and imagination. Considering his poetry as a whole, in matter rather than form, we may safely define the mainsprings of inspiration as Nature, Celtic Memories and Catholic Faith. A glorious trio it was, falling into subdivisions of
