witted discernment of those analogies which are the 'roots' of the poet's language," but regretted his lack of the "shy moderation which never says as much as it means." Yet, when all is said, one hesitates to bring the "personal equation" too close to a poet's individuality, or to criticise the passion flower because it is neither a rose nor an asphodel. Why should it not be—just a passion flower? In all nature there are few things more tragically significant. And no one who has read those illuminating prose reviews, contributed originally to the Athenæum or the Academy, could for an instant question Thompson's fundamental critical ability. Melody he knew, and dissonance he knew, with purposeful effect: but his was the large way of Il Magnifico in things alike good and ill.
Death has done much for Francis Thompson; still he is not yet under danger of becoming a "popular poet." In more than a score of passages he has imprisoned emotions still palpitating with life; he has found words for those flashes of consciousness which, almost to our own souls, remain inarticulate. But they are not surface emotions, and in mode of expression the poet was supremely heedless of the wide appeal. Moreover, being far from obvious, his poems demand somewhat of the reader's co-operation, with the inevitable result of minimising the circle of these readers. No one was more conscious of this than Thompson himself in the rare moments when he can be said to have been at all conscious of his reader; "The Cloud's Swan Song" alludes to it with a delicate and piercing pathos. But this, after all, is the slightest test of poetic worth. Those who are willing to delve a little will find real gold in Francis Thompson's volumes—gold of a burning purity and brilliance all too rare in the mines of latter-
