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

90 George Saintsburybook deserved more success than it obtained. What wassaid above as to ill luck of times and seasons comes inhere with quiet force. But if anybody desires to testLang's poetic value in the first instance, at less expenseof effort, let him read the 'Ballade of his Choice of aSepulchre' and the Burnaby sonnet. At the worst he willnot have wasted his time: for a result of dissatisfactionwill show that he does not himself know poetry when hesees it and had better let it alone. Some people not sohopeless prefer, I believe, one or other of the Gordonepicedes to the Burnaby one: but that is only an instanceof the common error of judging by subject, not treatment.The mention of the Sepulchre piece—one of the mostcharming things of the kind that, in a tolerably widefamiliarity with verse, I know—will lead with peculiarpropriety to what may be called the specially epitaphicpart of this paper. Dismissing for a moment Lang thearchitect, and artist, what was Lang the man? There hasbeen some talk about this lately: and as only a comparativelysmall minority of the hearers, that is to say,readers, of this talk can be supposed to be in a positionto check it by extensive personal experience it is perhapsjust as well that those who are in such a position shouldput in their evidence. I may have said it before in print—but what I say twice is not necessarily untrue—that I donot think anybody outside his own family knew Lang byfrequent companionship and conversation much betterthan I did. For not a few years we walked together—people walked then and consequently talked—for aboutthree parts of the length of more specially habitableLondon, two or three times a week. And if any one shouldsay: 'Ah! he couldn't get rid of you!' this is futile: forhe could easily have done so. Being a faster though nota much more legible writer than myself he had alwaysdone his leader ten minutes or a quarter of an hour before