and of
sentiment, will remain alive, whatever may be the fate of the author's
'Greenwood's Farewell' and 'Meda Maiden.' Lord Rosslyn, it will be
remembered, was one of the most successful of the Jubilee Laureates;
but, even before that, he had made himself esteemed by many trustworthy
judges as the producer of numerous good sonnets.

''Tis ridiculous,' says Selden, 'for a lord to print verses; 'tis well
enough to make them to please himself, but to make them public is
foolish.' He goes on to add that

'If a man in his private chamber twists his band-strings, or plays
with a rush to please himself, 'tis well enough; but if he should
go into Fleet Street, and sit upon a stall, and twist a
band-string, or play with a rush, then all the boys in the street
would laugh at him.'

No doubt they would have done so in Selden's time; and much more readily
would they do so now. But that is scarcely to the point. _Pace_ Master
Selden, there is nothing ridiculous in a lord printing his verses--if
they be but good enough for the process. A peer is not necessarily a
poet, but a poet is none the worse for being a peer. Nay, there are even
certain kinds of verse in which a peer may, other things being equal,
be actually expected to excel. There is nothing to prevent his being--as
Byron was--a poet of passion; there is every reason why, if he have the
requisite literary capacity, he should shine in the poetry of the
library, the _salon_, and the boudoir. He has usually the education for
the first, and the leisure for the other two. He generally has culture,
he always has breeding, he often has gallantry; and, with these
endowments, the poetry _par excellence_ of the peerage is well within
his reach.

Considerable, indeed, would be the loss to English literature if by any
chance the productions of our noble poets should disappear. Apart from
Byron, who, of course, stands a head and shoulders above all his
brethren, there is that Henry, Earl of Surrey, who ranks highest of all
poets between Chaucer and Spenser, and who did so much to popularize in
England both blank verse and the sonnet. But for Surrey both those
accomplishments, since so popular among us, might have been long in
establishing themselves in English poetry. The other poet-peers of the
sixteenth century were admittedly not of the first class. Yet
Buckhurst's share in 'The Mirror for Magistrates' and in the tragedy of
'Gorboduc' was of undoubted va