SOURCE: "1837-1840" and "1848," in Monckton Milnes: The Years of Promise, 1809-1851, Constable, 1949, pp. 98-120, 272-96.

In the following excerpt, Pope-Hennessy studies the contemporary critical response to Milnes' Grecian poems and his biography of Keats.

The discussion of Milnes' poetry by Samuel Rogers and Gladstone was no doubt caused by the simultaneous appearance of two volumes of his verse. These successors to the Grecian pieces of five years before were entitledMemorials of a Residence on the Continent and Poems of Many Years. Privately printed in 1838 for circulation amongst the poet's friends, they were published and put on sale later the same year. The twin volumes were well and prominently reviewed, praised for 'the equable tone of sound, unaffected sensibility which pervades them,' but declared to be out of keeping with the times. Quoting "The Flight of Youth," with its melancholy little metre:

Yes, he must have gone...