Payne followed the law, and
with success, but his heart was with the Muses and the odorous East.
From a boy he had loved and studied the old English, Scotch and Welsh
writers, with the result that all his productions have a mediaeval
aroma. The Faerie Queene, Chaucer and his successors--the Scottish
poets of the 15th and 16th Centuries, The Morte d'Arthur, the authorised
version of the Bible and North's Plutarch have always lain at his
elbow. Then, too, with Dante, Shakespeare and Heine's poems he is
supersaturated; but the authorised version of the Bible has had more
influence on him than any other book, and he has so loved and studied
it from boyhood that he had assimilated its processes and learned the
secrets of the interior mechanism of its style. It is not surprising
that his first publication should have been a book of poetry. The merits
of The Masque of Shadows and other Poems were acknowledged on all sides.
It was seen that the art of ballad writing--which Goethe calls the most
difficult of arts--was not, as some averred, a forgotten one. The Masque
of Shadows itself is melodious and vivid from the first line to the
end, but the captain jewel is the necromantic and thrilling Rime of
Redemption--the story of a woman who erred and of a man who prayed and
wrestled with God in prayer for her, and ultimately wrung her salvation
by self-sacrifice from Divine Justice. Here and there are passages that
we could have wished modified, but surely such a terrific fantasy was
never before penned! It is as harrowing as The Ancient Mariner, and
appeals to one more forcibly than Coleridge's "Rime," because it seems
actual truth. Other volumes, containing impassioned ballads, lyrics,
narrative poems and sonnets, came from Mr. Payne's pen. His poems have
the rush and bound of a Scotch waterfall. This is explained by the fact
that they are written in moments of physical and mental exaltation.
Only a mind in a quasi-delirious state, to be likened to that of the
pythoness on the tripod, could have evolved the Rime of Redemption [345]
or Thorgerda [346]. No subject comes amiss to him. His chemic power
turns everything to gold. "He sees everything," as Mr. Watts-Dunton
once said to the writer--"through the gauze of poetry." His love for
beautiful words and phrases leads him to express his thoughts in the
choicest language. He puts his costliest wine in myrrhine vases; he
builds his temple with the lordliest cedars. Mr. Payne does not w