verse to the front of Whitehall (a comparison,
by the way, that would have enraged the poet beyond measure) proceeds to
play a fantastic aria on the same string, and tells us that 'Massinger
reminds us of the intricacies of Sansovino, Shakespeare of Gothic aisles
or heaven's cathedral . . . Ford of glittering Corinthian colonnades,
Webster of vaulted crypts, . . . Marlowe of masoned clouds, and Marston,
in his better moments, of the fragmentary vigour of a Roman ruin,' one
begins to regret that any one ever thought of the unity of the arts.
Similes such as these obscure; they do not illumine. To say that Ford is
like a glittering Corinthian colonnade adds nothing to our knowledge of
either Ford or Greek architecture. Mr. Symonds has written some charming
poetry, but his prose, unfortunately, is always poetical prose, never the
prose of a poet. Still, the volume is worth reading, though decidedly
Mr. Symonds, to use one of his own phrases, has 'the defects of his
quality.'

'English Worthies.' Edited by Andrew Lang. Ben Jonson. By John
Addington Symonds. (Longmans, Green and Co.)

THE POETS' CORNER--I

(Pall Mall Gazette, September 27, 1886.)

Among the social problems of the nineteenth century the tramp has always
held an important position, but his appearance among the
nineteenth-century poets is extremely remarkable. Not that a tramp's
mode of life is at all unsuited to the development of the poetic faculty.
Far from it! He, if any one, should possess that freedom of mood which
is so essential to the artist, for he has no taxes to pay and no
relations to worry him. The man who possesses a permanent address, and
whose name is to be found in the Directory, is necessarily limited and
localised. Only the tramp has absolute liberty of living. Was not Homer
himself a vagrant, and did not Thespis go about in a caravan? It is then
with feelings of intense expectation that we open the little volume that
lies before us. It is entitled Low Down, by Two Tramps, and is
marvellous even to look at. It is clear that art has at last reached the
criminal classes. The cover is of brown paper like the covers of Mr.
Whistler's brochures. The printing exhibits every fantastic variation of
type, and the pages range in colour from blue to brown, from grey to sage
green and from rose pink to chrome yellow. The Philistines may sneer at
this chromatic chaos, but we do not. As the painters are always
pilfering f