THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF SYDNEY DOBELL.* THE student of

human nature will find much to interest him in this remarkable biography. No poet probably ever had a stranger education than Sydney Dobell, or one which would seem more inimical to the development of genius. From his cradle he was brought up unlike other children. His mother was the daughter of a certain Samuel Thompson, who founded a Church " on the Primitive Christian Model," and obtained some followers. How many these were in number, we are not• told ; but Sydney's father and mother were devout adherents to the little sect, which in its extreme exclusiveness, and boast of separation from what it was pleased to call "the world," seems. to have resembled the Plymouth Brethren. Mr. Dobell, senior,. a man of highly nervous organisation, was originally a hide- merchant, and after various wanderings settled at Cheltenham as a wine merchant. The good man had a large family—Sydney was his eldest son—and in order to avoid the peril of worldly contamination, none of his children were sent to school.

The future poet, a remarkably sensitive boy, was brought up in an unhealthy atmosphere. His parents were affec- tionate and unwise ; the boy's feelings were unnaturally excited, and he had none of the wholesome intercourse- with other boys in sports or studies which seems essen- tial to a robust and manly life. He was protected, it is true, from contact with evil ; but the virtue thus pro- duced is, at best, to quote Milton's words, a virtue "fu- gitive and cloistered." And, although protected from one kind of evil, he was liable to others not a whit less peril- ous to a spirit finely touched. His religious feelings were excited, and his spiritual life abnormally developed. As a mere boy, when he ought to have been playing at cricket or at foot- ball, he was assiduously studying prophecy ; and at sixteen, we are told, he spoke for more than two hours on the subject at a " Sunday meeting." Long before this, the boy had fallen in love with Miss Fordham, whose father, of course, belonged to " the Church." " I fell in love with her," he writes, " at ten,. we were engaged at fifteen, and married at twenty." Oddly enough, the children's love-letters were read by their parents,. and Mr. Fordham has to remonstrate on the "painful and ex- cessive feelings " betrayed by Sydney. Everything the excit- able boy did was, indeed, out of proportion, and suggests an unwholesome precocity. At twelve he was working at his father's office from ten till four, writing verses, and studying- Latin and French. A little later, Greek and Blackstone were added to his studies, and he seems to have taken an important position in the business. It will not, therefore, surprise the reader to learn that he suffered from a nervous fever, and was completely laid aside for weeks. On regaining health, we. read that " lessons and accounts continued chiefly to fill his days ; " but he rode on horseback, and was a bold rider—and this exercise all through his sickly life seems to have proved a restorative. One trouble after another pursued the young couple after their marriage, but the loyal love that united them served to lighten their sorrows. Ill-health was the lot of both, and at one time it did not seem probable that Mrs- Dobell would survive her husband. Sydney suffered from a complication of evils. A dreadful attack of rheumatic fever soon after the marriage was followed by a number of maladies as well as accidents, and as we read the story, instead of won- • The Life and Letters of Sydney Dollen. Edited by "E. J.," with Steel Portrait and Photographic Ilinatratlone. 2 Tole. London: Smith, Eider, and 00. lank

daring how it came to pass that Dobell, with his keen intellect, his high enthusiasm, his generous sympathy and ardent love of knowledge, did so little, we can only feel surprise that he achieved so much. His life was a constant and exhausting struggle with physical evils, but he endured them with manly courage, and appears to have been uniformly cheerful. "There was always about him," we are told, " a morning atmosphere of gladness and of hope."

The Church to which Dobell belonged, small as it was, suffered from dissensions among the members ; but the poet never faltered in his allegiance, although he eventually became too *" broad " to retain some of its tenets. In the early years of marriage he visited no one who did not belong to his tiny sect; but later on, society proved as welcome to him as to other men, and when his health allowed of the pleasure, he enjoyed it heartily. His parents evidently feared that their faithful Abdiel was relapsing into worldly ways. " My mother says," he writes, " she should be pleased if she heard I was preaching Religion anywhere, but that to lecture on the nature of poetry seems to her mere vanity, in which she can take no interest. She forgets that the nature of poetry is precisely the question that underlies the most difficult and

serious questions that concern the human mind." Let us hope

the good lady's motherly fears were removed when, on the birth of a sister's child, Dobell expressed a wish that "the little red hand may strike a blow at Armageddon." It was Dobell's belief, and a wise belief, truly, that Christian men are bound to cultivate their intellects as widely as possible, in order that their judgments may carry weight with unbelievers :—

" My hope," he writes, "for any great and wide-spread change in the mental state of the time is founded (as to its human bases) on some such plan as follows : — Let half-a-dozen growing men of unusual gifts and character cut their way to English eminence in their various mental departments,—an eminence irrespective of theology, and acknowledged, therefore, by all parties and opinions. Having gained this public position and made it sure, let each come forward, with the New Testament in his hand, and say practically or verbally somewhat thas,' Tried by the intellectual standards you yourselves set up, my fellow-men, you consent to acknowledge me your superior. Measured by yourselves, I am stronger, higher, and wiser than you. Behold this Book, which is not good enough for yon,—it is sufficient for me !' The egotism or egoism, which perhaps, deforms these words, deforms them only because they are words. Put the pronunciamento into a life, and the self-assertion disappears. Till something of this kind can be done, I believe all direct polemics will be of little avail."

Dobell's high hope was to benefit mankind by writing a poem on the Second Advent, but his aspirations in this direction, as well as in others, were crashed by the failure of health. For a protracted period he was forbidden to write at all. All brain- labour proved too exciting for his feeble frame,—he found letter- writing " the greatest of all labours," and for some time while staying in the Isle of Wight he was forced to wear a respirator when moving from room to room.

Dobell was in business on his own account at Gloucester, and appears also to have retained some interest in his father's busi- ness at Cheltenham ; but how affairs were managed is not very evident, for only at the beginning of his married life and to- wards its close can he be said to have had a settled residence. For a long time the invalids were in Edinburgh and its neigh- bourhood; they were sent by medical advice to the Isle of Wight, to Clifton, to the South of France, to Italy, and Spain; and amidst the distraction of these constant changes, and the weakness that made them necessary, many thoughts could scarcely have been given to business matters.

Dobell, like most generous and sympathetic natures, had the art of winning friends. He seems to have had some slight but pleasant intercourse with Mr. Tennyson, for whose poetry he expressed an unbounded admiration ; and with Mr. Carlyle and Professor Blackie, Dr. Samuel Brown, and we need scarcely add, Alexander Smith, he maintained a warm friendship. " All his life," we read, "friendship was more to Sydney Dobell than is common in these days." In the good-faith of all whom he called " friends " he placed unlimited trust. Dobell had a high opinion of his own poetry, and especially of " Balder," which he considered a " permanent work ":—

"No one," he writes, "who a few years hence looks back to the poetical literature of the past seven years can avoid seeing my name and examining my books. And that examination being inevitable, I &aye no fear of the result. I found Balder'—the principal parts of which I had quite forgotten—on the table at Odsey, and dipping into it, was thankful to feel perfectly satisfied in leaving it to the first great poetical critic who shall arise in this country."

Yet he enjoyed as any stranger might Aytoun's splendid bur-

lesque on his poetry, and writes of Firmilian as wonderfully well done ; and on meeting Aytoun, who had " abused " him in

Blackwood, and called him " Gander Rodney," he has the follow- ing story to tell:— " He and I were at a party, but had not come in contact. As I was bidding Mrs. — good-bye near the door, Aytonn came up also, on his way out. Dr. Simpson seized him, and introduced us. Aytoun looked puzzled and amused, and was profoundly polite ; but was room. I stepped after him, and clapping him on the shoulder, said, obliged to follow the ladies of his party, who had already left the The Doctor did not introduce us perfectly just now,—be omitted some of my styles and titles. You probably know me better as Gander Redney t' How his eyes twinkled ! Simpson told me after- wards that at the bottom of the stairs he told the story with roars of laughter."

Dobell's own opinion on matters poetical was sometimes pecu- liar. He declares that poetry should roll from the heart as tears from the eyes—unbidden—and only then ; that rhyme is the curse of our language and literature ; and that the very highest poetry may be written in prose. It is difficult to under- stand how a poet—and Dobell, with many weaknesses and limita- tions, was unquestionably a poet—should have pronounced such profoundly ignorant judgments as these; and yet it is cer- tain that the theory of poetry, as well as its practice, bad engaged much of his attention. His opinion with regard to what is called " popular poetry," namely, that " the popular element is chiefly the non-poetry which exists in every poem, and never the differentia by virtue of which the poetry is poetry," may possibly be a sound one ; but it might more certainly be added that almost all truly great poets exhibit, by virtue of their humanity, a goodly share of that popular element.

The Idle and Letters of Sydney Dobell convey a beautiful impression of the poet's character. His unselfishness, his purity, his loftiness of aim, his deep affection for those whom he loved, his unswerving trust in God, his restfulness of spirit,—these are traits which justify the warm expressions of affection uttered by some of his friends. In other points of view, the biography, though skilfully written, is open to criticism. Two large volumes about a comparatively small poet is an un- necessary tax upon the reader's patience, and it is evident that the work might have been reduced in size with considerable ad- vantage. Long reviews and other printed papers may interest ardent admirers of Dobell, but assuredly will not interest the public. Much, too, is published which, by the insertion of blanks instead of names, is unintelligible ; and the notes of Dobell during his Continental tours, although sometimes very pertinent, might have been abridged with advantage. A pleas- ing portrait of the poet forms an attractive feature of the work.