SOURCE: An introduction to The Poetical Works of Thomas Lovell Beddoes, J. M. Dent and Co., 1890, pp. xvii-xxxix.

In the following essay, Gosse provides a biographical and critical overview of Beddoes.

I

In a letter written to Kelsall in 1824, Beddoes makes the following remarks on the poetical situation of the moment:—

The disappearance of Shelley from the world seems, like the tropical setting of that luminary to which his poetical genius can alone be compared, with reference to the companions of his day, to have been followed by instant darkness and owl-season: whether the vociferous Darley is to be the comet, or tender full-faced L. E. L. the milk-and-watery moon of our darkness, are questions for the astrologers; if I were the literary weather-guesser for 1825 I would safely prognosticate fog, rain, blight in due succession for its dullard months.

When these words were written, the death of Byron...