Arthur Waugh

“ The characteristics of De Tabley’s poetry are pre-eminently magnificence of style, derived from close study of Milton, sonority, dignity, weight and colour. His passion for detail was both a strength and a weakness: it lent a loving fidelity to his description of natural objects, but it sometimes involved him in a loss of simple effect from over-elaboration of treatment. He was always a student of the classic poets, and drew much of his inspiration directly from them. He was a true and a whole-hearted artist, who, as a brother poet well said, “still climbed the clear cold altitudes of song.” ”

“ During the later years of his life Lord De Tabley made many new friends, besides reopening old associations, and he almost seemed to be gathering around him a small literary company when his health broke, and he died on the 22nd of November 1895 at Ryde, in his sixty-first year. He was buried at Little Peover in Cheshire. Although his reputation will live almost exclusively as that of a poet, De Tabley was a man of many studious tastes. ”

“ He was somewhat disappointed by their lukewarm reception, and when in 1876 The Soldier of Fortune, a drama on which he had bestowed much careful labour, proved a complete failure, he retired altogether from the literary arena. ”