perused, with disgust at their effeminacy, the translations of many of his best sonnets.

"I am revising the three Stories of Wicklow already written, and I have projected a fourth, which I shall commence immediately.

"Forgive this intense egotism, and believe me to remain, ever yours sincerely,-E. J. ARMSTRONG.” The next letter qualifies the criticisms of the foregoing, and concludes the correspondence of the year :

'A

LETTER XLVIII. (To G. A. C.)—“ Baotia, Christmas Day, 1862.-My dear C*******, first-rate novel is a first-rate poem, and the only firstrate poem now possible.' I don't agree with you, because I believe that the novel, at best, is only an approach to poetry, which requires, as its characteristic essential, to be expressed in rhythm and numbers. It seems to be a universal law of nature which ranks the verse-writer higher than the prosewriter in the estimation of peoples. The age which produced Boccaccio produced also Dante and Petrarch; yet the author of the Hundred Tales was never crowned with laurel on the Capitol. The greatest modern novelist and the greatest modern poet were contemporaries; yet Scott, in his palmiest days, never attained the applause which was lavished on his rival. This is certainly a very important question, and I hope you will not suffer it to drop here. . . . In the meanwhile, however, I

would propose an amendment of your dictum. A first-rate novel is the nearest approach which we find in these days to the ancient ideal of the Epic; and the man who can write a first-rate modern novel, could compose, if he were a perfect master of the art of versification, the greatest poem ever yet produced. What sort of a novel would Tennyson write, I should like to know. Yet if Wilkie Collins and Thackeray possessed the Laureate's accomplishment of verse, there can be little doubt that they would write far better poems than he ever wrote.

"It is a significant fact, that our poets, notwithstanding their mediocrity, are esteemed higher than our best novelists by every one except commercial old gentlemen and young ladies of the fashionable watering-places....-Yours, &c., E. J. ARMSTRONG."

CHAPTER XV. 1863, ÆT. 21—.

66

Letter XLIX. The Relations of Tragedy and Comedy.—A Dramatic Poem Abandoned. - A Midnight Arrival at Home.-Wicklow Walks.-Levee-Day at Dublin Castle; Suggestions.-Letter L.: "De Profundis."—Letter LI.: The "Odyssey."-Letters LII., LIII.: " 'The Divinity of Work."-Religion of Selfishness denounced.—“ Penitential Trilogue."-Utmost Limit of Religious Belief.— Letter LIV.: A Dream; Eternity of Bliss.-Letter LV.: Hope; Recollections of Jersey.-Letter LVI.: "The Opera: A Lyric."-Letter LVII.: A Frank Avowal.-The Philosophical Society of Dublin University: Essay on Shelley.— "Poetry versus The Novel."-Letter LVIII.: Rules for Artists; Dublin Castle: A Satirical Novel."-Celebration of the Prince of Wales's Marriage.-Letters LIX., LX., LXI.: Reminiscences of France.-Letter LXII. : Feeling towards Old Correspondent.-Letter LXIII.: An Invitation.-Essay on Shelley at T. C. D.—A Day in the Devil's Glen.-"Mary of Clorah."-Letter LXIV.: Mind and Body.-Letter LXV.: Contrasts; Duty; Solitude.Letter LXVI.: Plot for a "Sensation Novel;" Alarming Disappearance.-Letter LXVII.: A Generous Offer accepted; "Prisoner of Mount Saint Michael" commenced.— Writing the "Prisoner;" Absorption in the Work.-Letters LXVIII., LXIX., LXX., LXXI., LXXII., LXXIII. : "The Prisoner of Mount Saint Michael.”—Letter LXXIV.: Exhortations.-Home again.-"The Prisoner, &c." read.

N equally important subject of consideration. with him at this time, was that of the relations of tragedy and comedy.

It had been suggested to him to separate the serious and comic portions of the long poem above alluded to, which he had written in November, principally on the grounds of their incongruity; but, in endeavouring to establish the validity of this objection, its advocate had pushed his theory too far, extending it even to the drama. In a dramatic poem which Armstrong had commenced towards the close of December, and had gone on writing with rapidity-and which I shall indicate, for convenience, by the name of its hero, "Everard"— he had been steadily working out the obnoxious principle. The suggestion was, therefore, not very welcome at such a moment, and he replied to it as follows:

LETTER XLIX. (To G. F. A.)—" T—, January 5, 1863. . . . I am dead against altering a single incident of the plot of Everard,' though I shall spare no pains to render it plainer. . .

"The highest praise ever bestowed upon Shakespeare is, that he has bequeathed both 'tears and laughter to all time.' This constitutes the great difference between him and [our] subsequent poets. Shelley has said that 'King Lear is the most perfect specimen of the dramatic art existing in the world.' . . . Yet what would King Lear be without its Nuncle and its poor Tom? Julius Cæsar and Antony and Cleopatra are stately and classical tragedies, yet they [are not without] comedy.... Even

Othello has its drunken Lieutenant, and Macbeth its drunken Porter.

"Let us go back farther, and we find that even the severe and iron-hearted Æschylus condescends to comedy, when he represents the confusion and indecision of the chorus of aged Trojans at the most thrilling moment of his most appalling tragedy, the moment of the murder of Agamemnon by his wife. Homer likewise has his Thersites, his old councillors on the tower with voices like tree-grasshoppers, his limping Vulcan acting as cup-bearer in Olympus, his effeminate Paris, rescued from the field of battle in a cloud prepared by Venus, and placed by the side of the lamenting Helen. The Odyssey and the Hymn to Mercury are both redundant with excruciating comedy.

What were Hamlet without Polonius and the Clowns? What were Faust without its promenade, its drinking-company, its monkeys and witches, its exquisitely-contrasted byplay of Mephistopheles and Martha? What were The Robbers without the scene in the drinking-cellar, and the ludicrous revelations there unfolded? Lastly, look over Chaucer, and you will discover a paramount proof of the truth of my theory. Milton was a purely intellectual man. He had no comedy in his soul. Yet even he awkwardly attempts it in his account of the introduction of gunpowder,' and undoubtedly for this reason only, that he of all poets "Par. Lost," Bk. VI.-ED.