SOURCE: A review of At the Sign of the Lyre, in The Academy, No. 705, November 7, 1885, p. 299.

In the following review, Symonds praises At the Sign of the Lyre, noting graceful lyricism of Dobson's poetry.

Only a churl, or one indifferent to what is delicate in literature, could find words of censure for this collection of graceful lyrics [At the Sign of the Lyre], so exquisitely finished with accomplished art, so characteristic of their author's genius in the subtle blending of gentle pathos and light humour, so just in criticism both of manners and of letters, so marked by solid English sense amid the refinements of highly studied versification and the quaintnesses of scholarly archaisms. We hail this volume, together with its elder brother, Old-World Idylls, as one of the most perfect products of that latest Anglo-Gallic culture, to which English literature is also indebted for Mr. Lang's Ballades...