s enduring will, always working forward to the
only goal he knows." This singleness of purpose Beddoes never possessed.
Inheriting from his father the qualities of both poet and physician, the
faculties of the scientific man, trained and cultivated through a long
life by Dr. Thomas Beddoes (with whom poetry was but an occasional
pastime), seem to have overbalanced and diverted the poetic genius of
his son. The hereditary instinct overcame the individual bent. And in
spite of Lovell Beddoes' opinion that "the studies of the dramatist and
physician are closely, almost inseparably, allied," is it not true that
the analytical faculty so essential to the latter is rarely found in
connection with great creative ability? Sainte-Beuve never forgave
Balzac for saying that critics were unsuccessful authors, but he should
have consoled himself with the of the jesters, but many of them very
beautiful; and there are three more in _The Brides' Tragedy_. Since the
days of Elizabeth we have had nothing to compare with them. They have
that delicate poise of beauty, like the lighting of a butterfly on a
bending flower, that adds to our delight the keen sense of its
transitoriness. Here is one--"a voice from the waters:"

The swallow leaves her nest,
The soul my weary breast;
But therefore let the rain
On my grave
Fall pure; for why complain?
Since both will come again
O'er the wave.

The wind dead leaves and snow
Doth hurry to and fro;
And once a day shall break
O'er the wave,
When a storm of ghosts shall shake
The dead, until they wake
In the grave.

This is the least Elizabethan of them all, perhaps, in sentiment, but it
has an exquisite sombre tenderness and music of its own. Then follows
one of the finest of all Beddoes' songs, a dirge, beginning--

If thou wilt ease thine heart
Of love and all its smart,
Then sleep, dear, sleep;

which it is useless to quote entire, because it may be found in Dana's
_Household Poetry_, and in the best collection of songs we have, R. H.
Stoddard's _Melodies and Madrigals_, wherein are enshrined three of
Beddoes' dirges, all from this one drama of _Death's Jest-Book_.

The second volume of Beddoes' poems also contains _The Brides' Tragedy_,
written when he was but nineteen. More simple and coherent in plot and
construction than the other drama, it has more sweetness and less
strength. It is full of the innocenc