UNDER THE MICROSCOPE
make: we cannot but feel it singular that Mr. Tennyson should never have thought fit to call our attention in person to the beauties of "Maud;" that Mr. Browning should never have come forward, "motley on back and pointing-pole in hand," to bid us remark the value of "The Ring and the Book;" that Mr. Arnold should have left to others the task of praising his "Thyrsis" and "Empedocles." The last-named poet might otherwise have held his own even against the imputation of writing "mere prose" which now he shares with Milton: so sharp is the critical judgment, so high the critical standard, of the author of "The Book of Orm."
However, even in the face of the rebuke so deservedly incurred by the avowal of Mr. Rossetti's gross and deplorable ignorance of that and other great works from the same hand, I am bound in honesty to admit that my own studies in that line are hardly much less limited. I cannot profess to have read any book of Mr. Buchanan's; for aught I know, they may deserve all his praises; it is neither my business nor my desire to decide. But sundry of his contributions in verse and prose to various magazines and newspapers I have looked through or glanced over—not, I trust, without profit; not, I know, without amusement. From these casual sources I have gathered—as he who runs may gather—not a little information on no unim-
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