But the higher criticism, analysing the simile, detected
elements from Shakespeare and from Beaumont and Fletcher.
In June 1891 the poet went on a tour in Devonshire, and began his
Akbar, and probably wrote June Bracken and Heather; or perhaps it was
composed when "we often sat on the top of Blackdown to watch the
sunset." He wrote to Mr Kipling -
"The oldest to the youngest singer
That England bore"
(to alter Mr Swinburne's lines to Landor), praising his Flag of
England. Mr Kipling replied as "the private to the general."
Early in 1892 The Foresters was successfully produced at New York by
Miss Ada Rehan, the music by Sir Arthur Sullivan, and the scenery
from woodland designs by Whymper. Robin Hood (as we learn from Mark
Twain) is a favourite hero with the youth of America. Mr Tom Sawyer
himself took, in Mark Twain's tale, the part of the bold outlaw.
The Death of OEnone was published in 1892, with the dedication to the
Master of Balliol -
"Read a Grecian tale retold
Which, cast in later Grecian mould,
Quintus Calaber
Somewhat lazily handled of old."
Quintus Calaber, more usually called Quintus Smyrnaeus, is a writer
of perhaps the fourth century of our era. About him nothing, or next
to nothing, is known. He told, in so late an age, the conclusion of
the Tale of Troy, and (in the writer's opinion) has been unduly
neglected and disdained. His manner, I venture to think, is more
Homeric than that of the more famous and doubtless greater
Alexandrian poet of the Argonautic cycle, Apollonius Rhodius, his
senior by five centuries.
Pages:
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213