nglish arms, and, like many other men of his day, he quitted his
prospects of service and emigrated. He went to South Australia and
started as a sheep farmer. His efforts were attended with failure. He
lost his capital, and, owning nothing but a love for horsemanship and a
head full of Browning and Shelley, plunged into the varied life which
gold-mining, "overlanding", and cattle-driving affords. From this
experience he emerged to light in Melbourne as the best amateur
steeplechase rider in the colonies. The victory he won for Major Baker
in 1868, when he rode Babbler for the Cup Steeplechase, made him
popular, and the almost simultaneous publication of his last volume of
poems gave him welcome entrance to the houses of all who had pretensions
to literary taste. The reputation of the book spread to England, and
Major Whyte Melville did not disdain to place the lines of the dashing
Australian author at the head of his own dashing descriptions of
sporting scenery. Unhappily, the melancholy which Gordon's friends had
with pain observed increased daily, and in the full flood of his
success, with congratulations pouring upon him from every side, he was
found dead in the heather near his home with a bullet from his own rifle
in his brain.

I do not propose to criticise the volumes which these few lines of
preface introduce to the reader. The influence of Browning and of
Swinburne upon the writer's taste is plain. There is plainly visible
also, however, a keen sense for natural beauty and a manly admiration
for healthy living. If in "Ashtaroth" and "Bellona" we recognise the
swing of a familiar metre, in such poems as "The Sick Stockrider" we
perceive the genuine poetic instinct united to a very clear perception
of the loveliness of duty and of labour.

"'Twas merry in the glowing morn, among the gleaming grass,
To wander as we've wandered many a mile,
And blow the cool tobacco cloud, and watch the white wreaths pass,
Sitting loosely in the saddle all the while;
'Twas merry 'mid the blackwoods, when we spied the station roofs,
To wheel the wild scrub cattle at the yard,
With a running fire of stockwhips and a fiery run of hoofs,
Oh! the hardest day was never then too hard!

"Aye! we had a glorious gallop after 'Starlight' and his gang,
When they bolted from Sylvester's on the flat;
How the sun-dried reed-beds crackled, how the flint-strewn ranges rang
To the strokes of 'Mount