SOURCE: "Literary and Personal Characteristics," in The Life, Letters, and Friendships of Richard Monckton Milnes, First Lord Houghton, Vol. II, by T. Wemyss Reid, Cassell & Company, Limited, 1890, pp. 437-67.

In the following excerpt, Reid recounts Milnes' publications of poetry and surveys the contemporary criticism of these works.

To the present generation the poetry of Lord Houghton is practically known only in connection with one or two brief pieces, of unimpeachable grace and melody, which have attained a popularity that is literally worldwide. His more important works, as well as many shorter poems that are in every way equal in merit to those that have secured a lasting popularity, are but little known to the readers of to-day. The changes of fashion, which are as marked in literature as in dress, account in part for a fact of which no one was more conscious than Lord Houghton himself. In...