make a short conspectus of the Scandinavian mythology admissible.  As to the shorter things, the ‘Dream’ I have struck out.  ‘One Lesson’ I have re-written and banished from its pre-eminence as an introductory piece.  ’To Marguerite’ (I suppose you mean ‘We were apart’ and not ’Yes! in the sea’) I had paused over, but my instinct was to strike it out, and now your suggestion comes to confirm this instinct, I shall act upon it.  The same with ‘Second Best.’  It is quite true there is a horrid falsetto in some stanzas of the ’Gipsy Child’—­it was a very youthful production.  I have re-written those stanzas, but am not quite satisfied with the poem even now.  ‘Shakespeare’ I have re-written.  ‘Cruikshank’ I have re-titled, and re-arranged the ‘World’s Triumphs.’  ‘Morality’ I stick to—­and ‘Palladium’ also.  ‘Second Best’ I strike out and will try to put in ‘Modern Sappho’ instead—­though the metre is not right.  In the ‘Voice’ the falsetto rages too furiously; I can do nothing with it; ditto in ‘Stagirius,’ which I have struck out.  Some half-dozen other things I either have struck out, or think of striking out.  ’Hush, not to me at this bitter departing’ is one of them.  The Preface I omit entirely.  ‘St. Brandan,’ like ‘Self-Deception,’ is not a piece that at all satisfies me, but I shall let both of them stand.”

In 1879 he wrote with reference to the edition of his poems in two volumes—­

“In beginning with ‘early poems’ I followed, as I have done throughout, the chronological arrangement adopted in the last edition, an arrangement which is, on the whole, I think, the most satisfactory.  The title of ‘early’ implies an excuse for defective work of which I would not be supposed blind to the defects—­such as the ‘Gipsy Child,’ which you suggest for exclusion; but something these early pieces have which later work has not, and many people—­perhaps for what are truth faults in the poems—­have liked them.  You have been a good friend to my poems from the first, one of those whose approbation has been a real source of pleasure to me.  There are things which I should like to do in poetry before I die, and of which lines and bits have long been done, in particular Lucretius, St. Alexius, and the journey of Achilles after death to the Island of Leuce; but we accomplish what we can, not what we will.”

Enough, perhaps, has now been said about his critical method; and, as this book proposes to deal with results, it is right to enquire into the effect of that method upon men who aspired to follow him, at whatever distance, in the path of criticism.  The answer can be easily given.  He taught us, first and foremost, to judge for ourselves; to take nothing at second hand; to bow the knee to no reputation, however high its pedestal in the Temple of Fame, unless we were satisfied of its right to stand where it was.  Then he taught us to discriminate, even in what we loved best, between its excellences and its defects; to swallow nothing