But the more inde ESO I THI trast, is with the Jew of the Lay vim ta's with the same s Teen Temysar and Hawker looking die gee wat Ttagel and taking over the bets off the Ing WID issned from fi IS WITH VLE ID read in session the rests of her care se tion, only to learn how the poetic peastre mET vary in kind as vel as a degree: the two poems are a notable soft dr between the essencial and the comment. Sti. indeed, is Tenrys & theSCT I The En Grail removed from the arena f the End place and informóna experence that u some it may seem to rise pealousy near to the inte Instead of Havicers at the knits sedting forth from the anal Timage where gate and bulwark erken ser the sea" TerrySon carries us to the fantastic ball that Mein raised at Camelot, witor gat zones of scr? tore, set betwirt with many a mystic symbol" The landscape from the first description of the "April morn That puf & the swaying branches into smoke,” is in a region that no eye has bebeid and no imman foot has ever trod And the sea -it is not on the Severn shores that Lancelot encountered that darkening storm :

So lond a blast along the shore and ses,
Ye could not bear the waters for the blasŤ,
Tho' heapt in momás and nóges all the ses

Drove like a cataract, and all the sand

Swept like a river, and the clouded heavens Were shaken with the motion and the sound. And as the time and place, so is the action. The popular tradition, or legend, has evaporated into a vision of the poet's own brain which no man ever believed or could believe to be historic. There is not the slightest illusion in the reader's mind that these are real knights who are seeking a vessel supposed somewhere still to be hidden in the earth; it is characteristic of Tennyson's Arthur that he laments the Quest as a kind of ruinous madness sent among his followers, whereas in Hawker's poem he only regrets that he himself is restrained from the holy adventure. Hawker wrote as a Churchman, having his eye on an actual state of England in the past and seeing in prophecy a corresponding regeneration. Place by the side of those farewell lines which I have already quoted from Hawker,

Ha! Sirs-ye seek a noble crest to-day,

these words in which the Arthur of the Idyls explains his home-staying and his blindness to the vision. He, too, is a King who cannot leave his allotted field until his work be done,

but, being done,

Let visions of the night or of the day

Come, as they will; and many a time they come,

Until this earth he walks on seems not earth,

This light that strikes his eyeball is not light,

This air that smites his forehead is not air
But vision-yea, his very hand and foot-
In moments when he feels he cannot die,
And knows himself no vision to himself,
Nor the high God a vision, nor that One
Who rose again: ye have seen what ye have seen.

Is it not plain that we are here rapt from this earth into the land of the spirit? It is even safe, I think, to say that this song of The Holy Grail is the most purely spiritual poem in the language. I would not tarnish its beauty with a clumsy paraphrase of its sense, for, indeed, the value of this mystical music lies entirely in the spontaneous echo stirred in the reader's breast. But clearly it is, in a general way, an expression of that hungering after the ideal which exists in every human being, obscured for the most part by the necessities of the day, and to those even who hearken to its summons speaking so vaguely that all but one or two go out to "follow wandering fires, lost in the quagmire."

There is nothing of this universal meaning in Hawker's lines, and they are little concerned with that inner truth which is essential to the human spirit, although by most of us so dimly perceived. But they have their great compensation. It is not necessary to explain once more how vividly the scenes of that poem reproduce in imagination the particular land in which the poet dwelt, and how perfectly its theme blends together the legendary exploits of King Arthur's

knights with the poet's own religious experience and with the traditions of the church which he served. It is, indeed, not unlikely that many readers will feel more at home in these passing but very tangible moods of religion than in the ethereal vision of Tennyson, whose truth corresponds to no realities of outer life. And if Hawker's language lacks the pure and essential beauty of Tennyson's, there is nevertheless a certain fine sonorousness in his measure, and here and there a verse rings almost with the gravity of Lycidas, where Milton in like measure bewails the degeneracy of the land. These may be contingent qualities and may demand for their full enjoyment a special knowledge of the poet's life, but they are genuine and have their precious reward. I have quite failed in this essay if my aim has not been evident to spare the impatient reader as much as possible of this preliminary labour and to shorten the way to his journey's end.

FANNY BURNEY

I LIKE better to begin with this English maiden name, with its pleasant familiarity, than to adopt the stately Madame D'Arblay which stands at the head of Mr. Austin Dobson's superb edition of the Diary and Letters. For however much the form of this minute self-revelation may remind us of the famous French diaries, in substance it is singularly English, and on that quality not a little of its interest depends, as well as its very grave defects. There is, too, something incongruous in the very sound of a name which did not belong to the writer until she was fortyone. By a kind of unconscious selection the memory of our great friends and mentors of the

'Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay (1778–1840). As edited by her niece, Charlotte Barrett. With Preface and Notes by Austin Dobson. In six volumes. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1904-05.-This is properly a continuation of The Early Diary of Frances Burney (1768–78), with a Selection from her Correspondence, and from the Journals of her Sisters, Susan and Charlotte Burney. Edited by Annie Raine Ellis. Two volumes. London, 1889. The eight volumes together thus extend over a period of seventy-three years.