Richard Garnett

“ Linton, on her separation from her husband, returned to fiction, adopting a manner widely dissimilar to that of her early works. Having previously been romantic and imaginative, she now demonstrated that experience of the world had made her a very clear-headed and practical writer, excellent in construction, vigorous in style, entirely competent to meet the demands of the average novel-reader, but bereft of the glow of enthusiasm which had suffused her earlier works. ”

“ He was the last man to write, as he aspired to do, the poem of his age, but no contemporary poet offers such a multitude of thoughts 'as clear as truth, as strong as light,' and descriptions of exquisite charm and photographic accuracy, easily detached from their context and remembered for their own sakes. ”

“ Though not ranking among the foremost of his generation, Allingham, when at his best, is an excellent poet, simple, clear, and graceful, with a distinct though not obtrusive individuality. His best work is concentrated in his 'Day and Night Songs' (1854) , which, whether pathetic or sportive, whether expressing feeling or depicting scenery, whether upborne by simple melody or embodying truth in symbol, always fulfil the intention of the author and achieve the character of works of art. The employment of colloquial Irish without conventional hibernicisms was at the time a noteworthy novelty. ”

“ They possess in an eminent degree those qualities of ease, symmetry, and finish which are usually the last to be expected in the work of so young a man; they are sufficiently like the elder Patmore's work to seem almost written by him, while yet differentiated from his by a subtle and indefinable aroma of their own. ”

“ If, however, the poet neither expressed a new view of life nor created a new form of poetry, his style and cast of thought were indisputably his own. The volume nevertheless failed to win public attention, and the author, probably prompted less by disappointment than by dissatisfaction with the defects which he had discovered in 'Empedocles,' withdrew it after disposing of fifty copies. He was already providing himself with a new pièce de résistance, better adapted to exemplify his creed as a poet. ”

“ His 'Guide to Modern English History' from 1815 to 1835, published after his return from Madeira, is a very remarkable book, composed in a singularly concise and pregnant style, almost every sentence embodying a criticism or some view or suggestion of marked originality. The author's very merits, nevertheless, render him an unsafe guide to follow implicitly, his obiter dicta are not supported by reasoning or authority; as a critic of men and events he is as valuable as he is racy and entertaining. ”

“ He died at New Haven, Connecticut, U.S.A., on 1 Jan. 1898.
Linton's fame as an engraver is widely spread, but he has never received justice as a poet. His more ambitious attempts, though often true poetry, are of less account than the little snatches of song which came to him in his later years, bewitching in their artless grace, and perhaps nearer than the work of any other modern poet to the words written for music in the days of Elizabeth and James. Produced at so late a period of life, these lyrics evince an indomitable vitality. ”

“ Baynes was an excellent logician, and qualified by the bent of his mind to excel in any department of literary research. He seems to have been averse to deal with matters incapable of exact demonstration: hence his biography of Shakespeare, so masterly in many departments of the subject, ignores others; and his essay on Shelley in the 'Edinburgh Review,' in some respects the best in the language, is in others incomplete. As a man his character stands among the highest. ”

“ In the collected edition of his works 'Faithful for Ever' was amalgamated with 'The Victories of Love.' It must be said that the quality of poetical achievement went on decrescendo, though there are exceedingly fine things in 'Faithful for Ever.' The four poems nevertheless constitute among them such a body of deep and tender and truly poetical thought on love and lovers, embellished with charming pictures of English scenery and household life, as no other poet has given us. ”

“ His experience as a teacher led him to consider the question of Shakespeare's school learning, and his three essays on 'What Shakespeare learned at School,' which appeared in 'Fraser' for 1879 and 1880, based as they were upon a thorough investigation of the ordinary grammar school curriculum of Shakespeare's time, and illustrated by passages from his writings, exploded for ever the assumption that the poet must necessarily have been an ignorant man. ”

“ No one had sounder views on the laws of art, no one strove more earnestly after worthiness of subject and unity of impression, and yet the themes of all his objective poems are trivial orunsuited to his purpose, and his subjective pieces, with few exceptions, attract chiefly by the beauty of isolated details. ”

“ Her great gifts invention, humour, pathos, the power of bringing persons and scenes vividly before the eye could hardly have been augmented by any amount of study, and no study could have given her the incommunicable something that stamps the great author. ”

“ Their descriptive power and sense of the mysteriousness of Nature are balanced by frequent lapses into bathos; the total impression they produce is nevertheless one of dignity and intellectual distinction, and they have, at all events, the merit of independence of all contemporary poetry. ”

“ The obvious and unanswerable criticism is that the poet's professed subject of married life is only approached in the least successful parts of the poem, and hardly grappled with even there. The reason is plain: its domesticities were found incapable of poetical treatment.
If Patmore retained any desire to pursue the subject of connubiality further, it must have been checked by his irreparable loss in the death of his wife on 5 July 1862. She had long been sinking from consumption, and her life had been prolonged only by his devoted care. ”

“ The intellectual defects which the essay denounced were characteristically English defects. So on discovering himself to be at issue with the bulk of his countrymen in every region of opinion, Arnold subsequently undertook the unpopular office of detector-general of the intellectual failings of his own nation. The cast of his mind was rather critical than constructive, and the gradual drying up of his native spring of poetry, at no time copious left mm no choice between criticism and silence. ”

“ One exception to this habitual indifference to other men's work was the admiration he at this time entertained for Tennyson, with whom he had as much intercourse as the elder poet's distance from town and dislike to letter-writing would allow. Another friendship, which had more important results, was his acquaintance with Ruskin. who had been the pupil of Mrs. Patmore's father; Ruskin's enthusiasm for architecture was fully shared by Patmore, who wrote on this subject with far more enjoyment and spontaneity than upon literature. ”

“ It would not be easy to find a more charming volume of its class, whether in point of expression or of feeling; and the amiability and self-devotion of which the reader might otherwise tire are relieved by an originality amounting to eccentricity, finding vent in paradoxical but suggestive disparagement of Shakespeare, Goethe, Dante, and the middle ages. The extracts cover nearly the whole of the writer's life. ”

“ Arnold’s correspondence is the only comprehensive authority for his life. Professor Saintsbury’s monograph (1899) is admirable wherever it is not warped by hostility to Arnold’s speculative ideas and some of his literary predilections. References to him in contemporary literature are endless, and he is the subject of innumerable critiques, including essays upon his poetry by Mr. A. C. Benson and the present writer, accompanying editions of his poems, and a remarkable article on the Poems of 1853 by Froude, in the Westminster Review (January 1854) . ”

“ He established himself at Appledore, a farmhouse near New Haven in Connecticut, gathered disciples around him, and by precept and example was accomplishing great things, when his career was checked by the introduction of cheap 'process' methods, inevitable when the art has become so largely popularised, but always regarded by him with the strongest objection. At first he sent his blocks to New York, but ultimately bought a press, and conducted both printing and engraving under his own roof. For the literary furtherance of his views on art he produced 'Practical Hints on Wood Engraving,' 1879 ”

“ Linton received his education at a school in Stratford, and in 1828 was apprenticed to the wood-engraver George Wilmot Bonner, with whom he continued for six years. He subsequently worked with Powis and with Thompson, and in 1836 became associated with John Orrin Smith [q. v.] , then introducing great improvements into English wood-engraving. About the same time he married the sister of Thomas Wade [q. v.] the poet, after whose death he wedded another sister. He now began to mingle in literary circles, and to make himself conspicuous as a political agitator. ”

“ In November 1866 Linton went to the United States. He had intended only a short visit in connection with a project for aiding democracy in Italy, but he found a wider field for the exercise of his art opened to him than at home, and he mainly devoted the rest of his life to the regeneration of American wood-engraving. ”