R,CHARD MONCKTON MILNES was born in the year - OUDL Home

86 George Saintsburyarticles. I have sometimes been sorry that the doubleentry did not then prevail: for the contrast-combinationin Lang's case would have been very remarkable, andmight have 'set' the idiosyncrasy of the writer with auseful decision at an early period, before the readingworld. As it was the world read the articles with eagernessas they appeared and then forgot all about them individually,while rather neglecting the verse which iscertainly not negligible.Probably few people have had a better right to claim,as though in different words he did claim, the benefit ofAnne Evans's great definition of humour,' thinking in jestbut feeling in earnest', than Lang: but the' feeling' nevergot proper recognition. Its verse expression was somewhatunlucky in point of time. There is not very much inthis particular book, though some of the translationsnecessarily employ it, of the formal French versificationwhich a little later became so common from his and otherhands: but the whole is more or less of that pre-Raphaelitecolour which was having its day if it had not fully had it,and much more than less of that great school of nineteenth-centurypoetry which after starting under Keatsand Shelley, and restarting after a short interval underTennyson and Browning had, with no interval at all,taken the pre-Raphaelite turn.Now fashion (which if not exactly a synonym for ' day'is closely connected with it), though not necessarily eithera bad or a good thing, is well known to have perhapsmore bad than good effects and consequences. Howevergood it is in itself it can be exaggerated or caricatured,and by unskilful imitation turned to bad. If it is bad initself, why it is bad, and there's no more to be said.Whatever its intrinsic quality, people are apt to get tiredof it to its own unfair disadvantage; or to make mistakesabout other things which are not the fashion or, worst of