And never be discovered till I die.

How much this has of the old, splendid audacity of the Elizabethans! How
unlike timid modern verse! Beddoes is always large, impressive; the
greatness of his aim gives him a certain claim on respectful
consideration. That his talent achieved itself, or ever could have
achieved itself, he himself would have been the last to affirm. But he
is a monumental failure, more interesting than many facile triumphs.

The one important work which Beddoes actually completed, _Death's
Jest-Book_, is nominally a drama in five acts. All the rest of his work,
except a few lyrics and occasional poems, is also nominally dramatic.
But there never was anything less dramatic in substance than this mass
of admirable poetry in dialogue. Beddoes' genius was essentially
lyrical: he had imagination, the gift of style, the mastery of rhythm, a
strange choiceness and curiosity of phrase. But of really dramatic power
he had nothing. He could neither conceive a coherent plot, nor develop a
credible situation. He had no grasp on human nature, he had no
conception of what character might be in men and women, he had no
faculty of expressing emotion convincingly. Constantly you find the most
beautiful poetry where it is absolutely inappropriate, but never do you
find one of those brief and memorable phrases, words from the heart,
for which one would give much beautiful poetry. To take one instance: an
Arab slave wishes to say that he has caught sight of a sail nearing the
coast. And this is how he says it:

I looked abroad upon the wide old world,
And in the sky and sea, through the same clouds,
The same stars saw I glistening, and nought else,
And as my soul sighed unto the world's soul,
Far in the north a wind blackened the waters,
And, after that creating breath was still,
A dark speck sat on the sky's edge: as watching
Upon the heaven-girt border of my mind
The first faint thought of a great deed arise,
With force and fascination I drew on
The wished sight, and my hope seemed to stamp
Its shade upon it. Not yet is it clear
What, or from whom, the vessel.

In scenes which aim at being passionate one sees the same inability to
be natural. What we get is always literature; it is never less than
that, nor more than that. It is never frank, uncompromising nature. The
fact is, that Beddoes wrote from the head, collectively, and without
emot