[In the following essay, Gosse argues that Dobson's great popularity as a poet has led to less serious critical attention to his work.]

In his sound and catholic Popular History of English Poetry, recently published through Messrs. A. M. Philpot, Mr. Earle Welby says that "Dobson, despite his popularity, is undervalued." I believe this to be as true as it is paradoxical, and I would go so far as to modify the phrase by saying "because of his popularity." Since the original publication of Dobson's early poetry exactly half a century ago, the circulation of his verse has been wider than that of any other English verse-writer of his immediate generation, and since his death, on September 2, 1921, the reissue of his writings has continued. Notwithstanding that, or as I obstinately repeat because of that, his genius as a poet has never been whole-heartedly proclaimed, and he still lacks critical appreciation which is freely bestowed on bards much his inferiors in art and refinement.

The issue, for the first time, of a complete collection of Dobson's poems seems appropriate for a consideration of the problem why, being so generally enjoyed, he is not more vigorously praised. But, on closer inspection, we shall find that his is not a solitary case. The critics are suspicious of a talent which appeals to a wide audience. The extreme popularity of "The Angel in the House" long blinded the best judges to the merit of Coventry Patmore, and, were I not afraid of being invidious, I could point to cases much more recent in which the main argument against poets has been that their works have a ready sale. The notion that poetry is something secret, like the laws of the Rosicrucians, and can be recognised only by the elect, is a general opinion in the inner circle of connoisseurs; and there is something, no doubt, to be said for it. Popularity adds no value to the verse of an Eliza Cook or an Ella Wheeler Wilcox, and so far as it is founded on facile metre and shallow thought it is a beacon warning the serious reader away from the rocks. But the critic needs to discover two things—why the verse is popular and whether the poet's judgment coincides with that of the public.

Austin Dobson, who was by three years Swinburne's junior, began to write at a time when the public was both a little mystified and a little wearied by the violence of the new poetry. He started late, and he journeyed warily, not gaining confidence in the practice of his art until he passed his thirtieth year. Meanwhile, after being touched not at all to his disadvantage by the colour of the Pre-Raphaelites, he left their neighbourhood and attached himself to the band of easy rhymers who were numerous and fashionable in the 'seventies. But he served a far severer apprenticeship than they, and has his reward in being still remembered, while they are all forgotten.

POPE taught him rhythm, PRIOR ease,
PRAED buoyancy and banter;
What modern bard would learn from these?
Ah, tempora mutantur,

he wrote in 1900, looking back to his own sources. But in 1870 various "modern bards" were glancing at these models, and particularly at Praed. The amazing elasticity, the vaultings over metrical trapèzes, which attracted the young Dobson to the author of the "Letter of Advice," were powerful factors moulding his own early verse, and they prepared his popularity without aiding in the development of his genius.

On the verses which Dobson wrote between 1865 and 1875, the stamp of Praed becomes more evident the further the work recedes. Such pieces—and these are among the most durably "popular" that he ever wrote—as "A Gentleman of the Old School" and "Incognita," might have been written by Praed himself when he was not quite at the summit of his sparkling audacity. A later writer, born midway between Praed and Dobson, was to the latter rather a colleague than a master; this was Frederick Locker, a wit in verse of delicate neatness but rather limited scope. It must be admitted that Dobson was at a disadvantage in direct rivalry with Locker and Praed, and for a reason which may now be noted.

Austin Dobson was called, by the abuse of a phrase which never was French and will never be English, a writer of vers de société. If this annoying epithet means anything, it indicates a writer who, like the innumerable rhymers of the ruelle in seventeenth-century France, having hung about the social centre, was able to turn out verses directly referring to current persons and incidents. This was the advantage also of the English poets who preceded Dobson; Praed had danced with Araminta and received the whispered confidences of Medora Trevilian. When Locker mournfully demanded

Where are the curls of Cantelupe,
The laugh of Lady Di?

he mentioned real persons whom everyone had seen riding in the Row. But Dobson, whose life was uniform and sequestered to a remarkable degree, had no aptitude for fashionable converse, and in social respects was like a titmouse. He was completely conscious of this, and was vexed at the perpetual repetition of the "writer of vers de société" epithet, for which, however, as is only just to point out, his own title-page of 1873 had been responsible. He desired to substitute for société the phrase lyra jocosa, but his myriad admirers of "A Dead Letter" and "The Child-Musician" would have none of this. Hence, before he could throw off the deluding influence of Praed and Locker, he was chained to an attribution which was proper to them but inappropriate to him. When he gained confidence in his own gifts, it was in the French and English romances of the eighteenth century, not in the observation of his own times, that he found his unique and proper sphere. To compare "The Ballad of Beau Brocade" or "The Ladies of St. James's" with "Dora versus Rose" is to realise what ingenuity Austin Dobson wasted in his early following of Praed.

Dobson's vogue with the admirers of his playful verse was already at its height when, refusing to accede to it, he set himself with intense application to the study of his art. It was about the year 1875, when he had passed the age of thirty-five, that he became profoundly moved, as so many poets of that generation were, by the "Petit Traité" of Théodore de Banville. No one learned so much as he from that extraordinary manual. We had the sonnet widely cultivated in England already; Austin Dobson proposed to introduce a variety of other "French forms"—the ballade, the rondeau, the chant royal, the villanelle. What attracted him to them was the discipline they demanded, the impossibility of cultivating them while yet remaining slipshod or irregular.

These "forms" are much despised to-day by writers who grudge the trouble of making their own verses scan, and who shrink from the labour of finding an intermediate rhyme. In Dobson's hands the ballade, elaborate and dignified, became an instrument of the highest art, and his examples of it are the best which any modern language has produced. A further impulse completed his apprenticeship. In 1877 Tennyson warned him against the dangers of facility, and recommended to him the terseness and fullness of Horace, proposing that Dobson should give close study to the workmanship of the "Odes." The mixture of pathos and jest in the great Latin miscellany instinctively attracted the young English poet, who took Tennyson's counsel to heart, and devoted some months to the minute analysis of the form of the "Odes." For the future, something definitely Horatian was added to his style, to its great advantage, although the muse of Austin Dobson was always more at home with Septimius and Posthumus than with Pyrrha and Lydia, of whose vagaries he was constitutionally a little shy.

Under the French and Latin influences of which I have just spoken, Austin Dobson achieved what, in my opinion, are his principal successes. It is a great convenience that in this new "complete" edition the date of composition of all the pieces has been recorded, especially since the editor has distributed the poems anew on a system of his own devising. When we examine the pages we find that this brief period from 1875 to 1880 is responsible for "The Idyll of the Carp" (Dobson's earliest experiment in lyrical dialogue), "Ars Victrix," the best rondeaux and ballades, and the inimitable "Beau Brocade." It also produced the set of minute lyrical dramas which he called Proverbs in Porcelain. The reader who wishes to enjoy the genius of Austin Dobson at its highest point of perfection should study these miniature comedies, adding to them "Au Revoir," which the editor (for what reason I cannot conceive) has removed to another part of the book. There is nothing like them in English, and very little in French. They have a colour, a music, a tenderness which lift them far above the playful verse of the eighteenth century, the elegant and well-turned wit of writers like Chaulieu or of Grasset, although to this latter in his tales Dobson owed some allegiance.

It is not easy, without too copious quotation, to give examples of the art of Proverbs in Porcelain, either when they are deliberately satirical, as "The Cap that Fits," almost boisterous in their humour, as "The Metamorphosis," or tender and even tear-compelling, as "Good-Night, Babette." Several of the little rhymed duologues bear a lyric in the heart of the conversation, and these songs, which include the facetious "When Jove, the Skies' Director," and the wistful "Once at the Angelus," are among Dobson's tiny masterpieces. After the period of which I have just spoken, he continued to write with perfection and delicacy, although not often with the same inspiration, but one quality never left him again, the determination to spare no pains, to devote unflinching hours to that labor limae, which seems to the amateur mere waste of time. I think it was Goethe who said that he enjoyed correcting his own poems as much as he did writing them. It was also Austin Dobson's favourite occupation.

I have hinted that in his most Horatian moods Dobson shrank from one phase of the Horatian experience. His type of womanhood was not Lyce or even Cynara, and he was content to find the feverish part of love disappearing as the odes of his favourite Latin master proceeded. The feminine ideal of Dobson is the fresh, innocent and unworldly, though by no means silly, maiden of seventeen. She appears before his window as out of one of Millais's drawings, in muslin and roses, with a garden hat and a book. She is ready for a little flirtation, but it must be carefully conducted, since she is excessively sensitive:—

So I dare not woo you, Sweet,
For a day,
Lest I lose you in a flash,
As I may;
Did I tell you tender things,
You would shake your sudden wings;—
You would start from him who sings,
And away I

Many of Dobson's early lyrics might have been written to illustrate scenes from the novels of Anthony Trollope, and they illustrate a like condition of cultivated middle-class society. At the present moment both seem old-fashioned, even dowdy, like the raiment of the inhabitants of Barset. But we must not ignore among the characteristics of Austin Dobson's prose and poetry the modesty of his outlook upon life. He shut his eyes to the violence of instinct and all the squalors of passion. In his otherwise almost faultless personal character, timidity was a feature which could not but be regretted. As he grew older his scruples grew upon him—his "apprehensions came in crowds," like those of Wordsworth's Margaret. He deprived himself of some of his beloved eighteenth-century authors because of the profane expressions they contained. He turned out of his library the poems of his favourite Théophile Gautier, because they harboured that harmless pleasantry, "Musée Secret." I do not pretend not to regret this prudery, which was a weakness that increased with advancing years. But I must bear witness that it was personal to the poet himself. No one was less Pharisaical than he, no one ever was more careful not to press upon others what he accepted as a law to himself. Nor am I quite sure that the novelists of to-day, who worship the dirty devils of psycho-analysis, have anything much more attractive to offer us than the perhaps excessive stainlessness of the Victorian angels.

The careful preface to this "complete" edition is signed by the poet's son, Mr. Alban Dobson, whose judicious devotion to his father's memory is beyond praise. It is well to have a final corpus of the work of so meticulous a workman as this poet, who even in his eightieth year had not entirely lost his skill. At the same time, I must record the opinion that Austin Dobson's poetry will be valued mainly in selections. In these 481 pages there are some repetitions and even a certain monotony. We can trust Mr. Alban Dobson, who has already brought out one very charming anthology since his father's death, to bear in mind the limitations of human attention. That the best of the poems before me will ever be neglected I refuse to believe:—

When the ways are heavy with mire and rut,
In November fogs, in December snows,
When the North Wind howls, and the doors are shut,—
There is place and enough for the pains of prose;
But whenever a scent from the hawthorn blows,
And the jasmine-stars at the casement climb,
And a Rosalind-face at the lattice shows,
Then hey!—for the ripple of laughing rhyme!

and we may be glad to quit Austin Dobson with so optimistic a reflection.