Above all ideal personalities with which the poet must learn to identify himself, there is one supremely real which is the most imperative of all; namely, that of his reader. And the practical watchfulness needed for such assimilation is as much a gift and instinct as is the creative grasp of alien character. It is a spiritual contact hardly conscious yet ever renewed, and which must be a part of the very act of pro-duction. Among the greatest English singers of the past, perhaps four only have possessed this assimilative power in pure perfection. These are Chaucer, Shakespeare, Byron, and Burns; and to their names the world may probably add in the future that of William Morris.

We have no thought of saying that not to belong to this circle, widest in range and narrowest in numbers, is to be but half a poet. It is with the poetic glory as with the planetary ones; this too has satellites called into being by the law of its own creation. Not every soul specially at-tuned to song is itself a singer; but the productive and the receptive poetic mind are members of one constellation; and it may be safely asserted that to take rank in the exceptional order of those born with perfect though passive song-perception is to be even further removed from the “general reader” on the one hand than from the producer of poetry on the other.

But some degree, entire or restricted, of relation to the outer audience, must be the test of every poet's vocation, and has to be considered first of all in criticising his work. The book under notice has perhaps as limited a reach of appeal as can well be imagined, and the writer's faculty of rapport seems on the whole imperfect; yet there are quali-ties in what he has written which no true poetic reader can regard with indifference.

The best and most sympathetic part of Dr. Hake's volume is decidedly its central division—the one headed “” Had one poem of this section, quaintly called “,” come first in the book, the favourable impression on opening it must have been immediate and conclusive. The poem is a symbolic expression of the humility of Christ in his personal ministering to man's needs and renewal of fallen humanity; and the subject is carried out with great com-pleteness as regards the contrast between Christ himself and his earthly representatives, his relation to all classes of men,

and the deliberate simplicity of his beneficent labour in the soul. The form of expression adopted in this poem is of the highest order of homely pathos, to which no common word comes amiss, and yet in which the sense of reverence and appropriateness is everywhere perfect. The piece is so high in theme, and so utterly good of its class, that we shall not attempt to extract from it, as its unity of purpose and execution throughout is the leading quality without which no idea of its merit can be conveyed.

Two others among the four “”—“” and “”—though some-what less perfect successes than this, rival it in essential value. They are contrasted pictures; the first, of poverty surrounded by natural influences and the compensations of universal endowment; the other, of poverty surrounded in the life of cities by social rejection only, and endlessly insti-gated to snatch some share of good by the reiterated scoff, “This is not for thee.” In the first poem a young forest-bred girl, in the second a boy reared in the fetid life of courts and alleys, is the medium through which the lesson is developed. Here, again, we are at some loss to express the poems by extract; but with this proviso we may take from the “” a few sweet stanzas of simple description:— “The wood is what it was of old, A timber-farm where wild flowers grow: There woodman's axe is never cold, And lays the oaks and beeches low: But though the hand of man deface, The lily ever grows in grace. “Of their sweet loving natures proud, The stock-doves sojourn in the tree: With breasts of feathered sky and cloud, And notes of soft though tuneless glee, Hid in the leaves they take a spring, And crush the stillness with their wing. “The wood to her was the old wood, The same as in her father's time; Nor with their sooths and sayings good The dead told of its youth or prime. The hollow trunks were hollow then, And honoured like the bones of men.” This simple story or parable has great beauties, especially at the point where the first acquaintance with death among those she loved causes the child to wander forth bewildered, and at last, weary and asleep in the wood, to find the images of terror and decay hitherto overlooked in nature assume prominence for the first time in her dreams. This is very subtle and lovely; but it must be added that even this poem, which is among the least difficult in the book, needs some re-reading before it is mastered, and leaves an impres-sion— if not of artificiality, to which the author's mind is evidently superior—yet of a singular native tendency to embody all conceptions through a remote and reticent me-dium. This, however, is much less apparent in the “” which approaches “” in clearness and mastery, though not essentially finer than its companion poem, the “” The description here of the poor beggar-boy's drunken mother is in a vein of true realistic tragedy; and the dire directness of treatment is carried on throughout:— “Then did he long for once to taste The reeking viands, as their smell From cellar-gratings ran to waste In gusts that sicken and repel. Like Beauty with a rose regaled, The grateful vapours he inhaled. “So oft a-hungered has he stood And yarn of fasting fancy spun, As wistfully he watched the food With one foot out away to run, Lest questioned be his only right To revel in the goodly sight. “Lest justice should detect within A blot no human eye could see, He dragged his rags about his skin To hide from view his pedigree: He deemed himself a thief by law, Who stole ere yet the light he saw. “His theft, the infancy of crime, Was but a sombre glance to steal, While outside shops he spent his time In vain imaginings to deal, With looks of awe to speculate On all things good, while others ate. “No better school his eyes to guide, He lingers by some savoury mass, And watches mouths that open wide And sees them eating through the glass: Oft his own lips he opes and shuts,— With sympathy his fancy gluts. “Yet he begs not, but in a trance Admires the scene where numbers throng; And if on him descends a glance, He is abashed and slinks along; Nor cares he more, the spell once broke, Scenes of false plenty to invoke.” The fourth “” called “,” deals with the course of an elevated soul in which thwarted ambition is tempered by resignation, and which looks into the future of eternity for free scope and for a reversed relation between itself and antagonistic natures. This, however, is somewhat obscurely rendered, and must be pronounced inferior to the other three. Of these three, we may say that, if they are read first in the book, the fit reader cannot but be deeply moved by their genuine human and spiritual sympathy, and by their many beauties of expression; and will be prepared to look thenceforward past his author's difficulties to the spirit which shines through them, with a feeling of enthu-siastic confidence.

We may turn next to the last section of the volume— the series of sixty-five short poems entitled in the aggregate “” Many of these reveal the same tender thought for human suffering which is the great charm of the “Parables,” and it is sometimes expressed with equal force and beauty. Such pre-eminently are those “” and “” the last conveying a picture which has something startlingly imaginative, of a member of the communion of saints presenting before the supreme Tribunal, as an appeal for pity, some poignant personation of the anguish endured on earth. However, here again the order of the poems seems unfortunate, the series opening with some of the weakest. Many of the “epitaphs” have appended to them an “epode” which appears to be, gene-rally or always, the rejoinder of the world to the poet's reflection; but perhaps these do not often add much to the force of the thing said. Such a scheme as this series presents is obviously not to be fairly discussed in a brief notice like the present; but we may note as interesting examples, in various degrees, of its plan, the epitaphs “” “” “” “” “” “” “” “” “” “” “” “” “” and “” As a specimen of this section of the book we extract the following brief poem “”— “Free as the soul, the spire ascends; Heaven lets it in her presence sit; Yet ever back to earth it tends,— The tranquil waters echo it. So falls the future to the past; So the high soul to earth is cast. “But though the soul thus nobly fails, Not long it borders on despair; It still the fallen glory hails, Though lost its conquests in the air. While truth is yet above, its good Is measured in the spirits' flood. “Though not at first, its holy light Is figured in that mirror's face, It scarce returns a form less bright Than fills above a higher place. The one was loved though little known, The other is the spirit's own.” This little piece, in spite of some uncertainty in the arrange-ment of its last stanza, has the dignity and ordered compass of a mind naturally empowered to deal with high things; and this is often equally evident throughout the series. Still we have to regret that even complete obscurity is a not uncommon blemish, while imperfect expression seems too often to be attributable to a neglect of means; and this despite the fact that a sense of style is certainly one of the first impressions derived from Dr. Hake's writings. But we fear that a too great and probably organic abstraction of mind interferes continually with the projection of his thoughts; and we are frequently surprised to meet, amid the excel-lence and fluent melody of his rhythm, with some sudden deviation from the structure of the metre employed, which can be attributable only to carelessness and want of watch-ful revision. It needs such practical and patent proofs as this to convince one of neglect where the instinct of structure exists so unmistakably; and it is then that we begin to perceive the cause of much that is imperfect in the author's intellectual self-expression. This is no doubt the absence of that self-examination and self-confronting with the reader which are in an absolutely unwearied degree neces-sary in art; and the question only remains whether the poet's nature will or will not for the future admit of his applying at all times a rigorous remedy to this mental shortcoming.

The same difficulty meets us in excess when we come to the poem which stands first on Dr. Hake's title-page— “” With this our remaining space is far from permitting us to deal at such length as could alone give any true idea of its involved and somewhat bewildering elements. Its unexplained form is a puzzle at the outset. It is delivered in a kind of alternating recitative between “Valclusa,” the name of the personified district in which the action is laid, and a “Chorus of Nymphs.” The argument may be sum-med up somewhat to this effect. Hermes, a beneficent magician and poet, has been enamoured of Daphne, who has since died and become to him a ministering spirit and his coadjutress in the hallowed exercise of his art. He has been made aware of the seduction of a young girl, Madeline, by the lord of the land, and has in vain laboured to prevent it, but now calls Daphne to his aid in consoling the outcast. This angelic spirit conveys her to the magician's home, where a sort of heavenly encampment is formed, in the midst of which Madeline lies in magic slumbers watched by her protectress. Glad and sad visions succeed each other in her sleep, varied but not broken by conference with Daphne, who urges her to forgiveness of her betrayer. But she has been chosen by a resistless power as the avenger of her own wrong; and as this ever-recurring phantom of vengeance gains gradual possession of her whole being, the angelic comforter, who has taken on herself some expiatory com-munion in Madeline's agony, is so wrung by the human anguish that she undergoes the last pain of humanity in a simulated death. Madeline then fulfils her destiny, and makes her way, still in a trance of sleep, by stormy moun-tain passes to the castle of him who had wrought her ruin; passes through his guards, finds him among his friends, and slays him. She then returns to the magic encampment, and lying down by the now unconscious Daphne, is in her turn released by death. The poem closes with the joint apo-theosis of the consoler and the consoled, together with a child, the unborn fruit of Madeline's wrong.

This conception, singular enough, but neither devoid of sublimity nor of real relation to human passion and pity, is carried out with great structural labour, and forms no doubt the portion of the volume on which Dr. Hake has bestowed his most conscientious care. But our rough argument can give no idea of the baffling involutions of its treatment and diction, rendering it, we fear, quite inaccessible to most readers. The scheme of this strange poem is as literal and deliberate in a certain sense as though the story were the simplest in the world; and so far it might be supposed to fulfil one of the truest laws of the supernatural in art—that of homely externals developing by silent contrast the inner soul of the subject. But here, in fact, the outer world does not once affect us in tangible form. The effect produced is operatic or even ballet-like as regards mechanical environ-ment and course of action. This is still capable of defence on very peculiar ideal grounds; but we fear the reader will find the sequence of the whole work much more difficult to pursue than our summary may promise.

The structure of the verse is even exceptionally grand and well combined; but the use of language, though often ex-tremely happy, is also too frequently vague to excess; and the employment of one elaborate lyrical metre throughout a long dramatic action, only varied by occasional passages in the heroic couplet, conveys a certain sense of oppression, in spite of the often felicitous workmanship. Moreover a rigid exactness in the rhymes—without the variation of assonance so valuable or even invaluable in poetry—is apt here to be preserved at the expense of meaning and spontaneity. Nevertheless, when all is said, there can be no doubt that the same reader who at one moment lays down a poem like this in hopeless bewilderment might at another, when his mind is lighter and clearer, and he is at a happier juncture of rapport with its author, take it up to much more luminous and pleasurable results, and find it really impressive. One point which should not be overlooked in reading it is, that there is an evident intention on Dr. Hake's part to make hysterical and even mesmeric phenomena in some degree the groundwork of his conception. The fitness of these for poetry, particularly when thus minutely dealt with, may indeed afford matter for argument, but the intention must not be lost sight of. Lastly, to deny to a decided element of ideal beauty, however unusually pre-sented, would be to demonstrate entire unfitness for judg-ment on the work.

We have left ourselves no room to extract from “” in any representative way; but the following two stanzas (the second of them extremely fine) may serve to give an idea of the metre in which it is written, and afford some glimpse of its uniquely fantastic elaboration. The passage is from the very heart of the poem; where Madeline is over-shadowed in sleep by the vision of her seducer's castle, rousing half-formed horror and resolve; till all things, even to the drapery which clothes her body, seem to take part in the direful overmastering hour. “The robe that round her flows Is stirred like drifted snows; Its restless waves her marble figure drape And all its charms express, In ever-changing shape, To zephyrs that caress Her limbs, and lay them bare, And all their grace and loveliness declare. Nor modesty itself could chide The soft enchanters as they past her breathe And beauty wreathe In rippling forms that ever onward glide. “Breezes from yonder tower, Loosed by the avenging power, Her senses hurry and a dread impart. In terror she beholds Her fluttering raiment start In ribbed and bristled folds. Its texture close and fine With broidery sweeps the bosom's heaving line, Then trickles down as from a wound, Curdling across the heart as past it steals, Where it congeals In horrid clots her quivering waist around.”

We have purposely avoided hitherto any detailed allusion to what appear to us grave verbal defects of style in these poems; nor shall we cite such instances at all, as things of this kind, detached from their context, produce often an exaggeratedly objectionable impression. Suffice it to say that, for a writer who displays an undoubted command over true dignity of language, Dr. Hake permits himself at times the most extraordinarily conventional (or once conventional) use of Della-Cruscan phrases, that could be found in any poet since the wonderful days when Hayley wrote the “.” And this leads us to a few final words on his position as a living writer.

It appears to us then that Dr. Hake is, in relation to his own time, as original a poet as one can well conceive pos-sible. He is uninfluenced by any styles or mannerisms of the day to so absolute a degree as to tempt one to believe that the latest English singer he may have even heard of is Wordsworth; while in some respects his ideas and points of view are newer than the newest in vogue; and the external affinity frequently traceable to elder poets only throws this essential independence into startling and at times almost whimsical relief. His style, at its most characteristic pitch, is a combination of extreme homeliness, as of Quarles or Bunyan, with a formality and even occasional courtliness of diction which recall Pope himself in his most artificial flights; while one is frequently reminded of Gray by sustained vigour of declamation. This is leaving out of the question the direct reference to classical models which is perhaps in reality the chief source of what this poet has in common with the 18th century writers. The resemblance sometimes apparent to Wordsworth may be more on the surface than the influences named above; while one might often suppose that the spi-ritual tenderness of Blake had found in our author a worthy disciple, did not one think it most probable that Blake lay out of his path of study. With all his peculiarities, and all the obstacles which really stand between him and the reading public, he will not fail to be welcomed by certain readers for his manly human heart, and genuine if not fully subju-gated powers of hand.