all the poems of his manhood there is a poignant, even a passionate sincerity. It is quite true that his elliptical and involved expression mars (for all but the very few who shared his theories of verse) more than one poem of rare and vital imagining. It is true also, and of the nature of the case, that our poet was to a certain degree self-centred in his dream of life. He was not an egoist; but it must be obvious that from first to last he was an individualist. And in our human reckoning the individualist pays, and then he pays again; and after that, in Wilde's phrase, he keeps on paying. Yet in the final count his chances of survival are excellent. Outside of the poets, Father Hopkins' work has had little recognition or understanding; but his somewhat exotic influence might easily be pointed out in one or two of the foremost Catholic singers of to-day and yesterday. And, for all its aloofness, the young priest's work struck root in the poetic past. Its subtle and complex fancifulness and its white heat of spirituality go back in direct line to that earlier Jesuit, Father Southwell; while one would wager that Hopkins knew and loved other seventeenth-century lyrists beside the very manifest Crashaw. It is by no means without significance, moreover, to note that Coventry Patmore's great Odes and Browning's masterpiece, The Ring and the Book, both appeared in that memorable 1868 when Gerard entered upon his novitiate. Those were the days when a young poet might, almost without public comment, fling out to the world his daring and beautiful gift.
Gerard Hopkins' poems are best known in a few precious anthologies. It is a truism to remark that merely great poetry is seldom popular; although the greatest of all poetry—that of Homer and Dante and Shakespeare—strikes a universal echo in the heart of man. It is inclusive, and it
