Love comes back to his vacant dwelling,—
The old, old Love that we knew of yore!
We see him stand by the open door,
With his great eyes sad, and his bosom swelling.

He makes as though in our arms repelling,
He fain would lie as he lay before;—
Love comes back to his vacant dwelling,—
The old, old Love that we knew of yore!

Ah, who shall help us from over-telling
That sweet forgotten, forbidden lore!
E'en as we doubt in our heart once more,
With a rush of tears to our eyelids welling,
Love comes back to his vacant dwelling.

The ballade, however, is by far the best of all these forms. I hold it second to the sonnet alone, and for some purposes superior even to the sonnet. It is fair to say that it is the only one of the French poems which in France itself has held its own against the Italian sonnet. The instrument used by Clément Marot, by Villon,—that "voice out of the slums of Paris," as Mr. Matthew Arnold called him,—by La Fontaine, and in later times by Albert Glatigny and Théodore de Banville, is surely worthy of honor. In Villon's hands it has dignity and depth, in Glatigny's it has pathos, and in Marot's, in Mr. Dobson's, and in Mr. Lang's it has playfulness and gayety. I believe Mr. Dobson himself likes the 'Ballade of Imitation' better than any of his other ballades, while I confess my own preference for the 'Ballade of Prose and Rhyme,' the only ballade à double refrain worthy to be set alongside Clément Marot's 'Frère Lubin.' It is almost too familiar to quote here at length, and yet it must be quoted perforce, for nohow else can I get the testimony of my best witness fully before the jury:

The Ballade of Prose and Rhyme

(Ballade à Double Refrain.)

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 whitethorn 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!

When the brain gets dry as an empty nut,
When the reason stands on its squarest toes,
When the mind (like a beard) has a "formal cut,"—
There is place and enough for the pains of prose;
But whenever the May-blood stirs and glows,
And the young year draws to the "golden prime"
And Sir Romeo sticks in his ear a rose,—
Then hey!—for the ripple of laughing rhyme!

In a theme where the thoughts have a pedant-strut,
In a changing quarrel of "Ayes" and "Noes,"
In a starched procession of "If" and "But,"—
There is place and enough for the pains of prose;
But whenever a soft glance softer grows
And the light hours dance to the trysting-time,
And the secret is told "that no one knows,"—
Then hey!—for the ripple of laughing rhyme!

Envoy

In the work-a-day world,—for its needs and woes,
There is place and enough for the pains of prose;
But whenever the May-bells clash and chime,
Then hey!—for the ripple of laughing rhyme!

It seems to me that in these poems Mr. Dobson proves that the rondel at its best and the ballade at its finest, belong to the poetry of feeling and not to the poetry of ingenuity. It seems to me, also, that the poet has been helped by his restrictions. Here are cases where a faith in these forms is justified by works. We may ask, fairly enough, whether either of these poems would be as good in any other shape. From the compression enforced by the rules, they have gained in compactness, and therefore in swiftness. They are, in Miltonic phrase, "woven close, both matter, form, and style."

It is to Mr. Dobson primarily and to his fellow-workers that the credit is due of acclimatizing these exotic metres in English literature. It is not that he was absolutely the earliest to write them in English—excepting only the ballade, of which the 'Prodigals' was the first. Chaucer wrote rondels, the elder Wyatt rondeaus, and Patrick Carey, about 1651, was guilty of devotional triolets! But England was not then ready for the conquest, and the forms crossed the Channel, like the Norseman, just to set foot on land and then away again. Even in France they had faded out of sight. Molière speaks slightingly of ballades as old-fashioned. Only in our own times, since M. de Banville set the example, has the true form been understood. Wyatt's rondeaus were printed as though they were defective sonnets. Both Longfellow and Bryant translated Clément Marot's 'Frère Lubin,' and neither of them knew it was a ballade à double refrain. Nor is Rossetti's noble rendering of Villon's famous 'Ballade of Dead Ladies' accurately formal. Mr. Lang, in his 'Ballads and Lyrics of Old France' (1872), was plainly on the right track, but he failed then to reach the goal. At last the time was ripe.

It was doubtless again due to Mr. Stedman's warning that, although there is no work which when well done secures a welcome as instant as vers de société, there is also "none from which the world so lightly turns upon the arrival of a new favorite with a different note,"—it was this wise warning which led Mr. Dobson to vary his style, not only with the revival of the French forms, but also with fables and with a slight attempt at the drama—in so far as the dainty and delicate Proverbs in Porcelain are substantial enough to be called dramatic. Like John Gay and like the late John G. Saxe, Mr. Dobson took to rhyming fables after making a mark by more characteristic verse. And Mr. Dobson's fables, good as they are, and pertinent and brightsome as they needs must be, since he wrote them, are like Gay's and Saxe's in that they are not their author's best work. The fault plainly is in the fable form, if Mr. Dobson's fables are not as entertaining as his other poems; at any rate, I am free to confess that I like his other work better.

I have to confess, also, with great doubt and diffidence, that the half-dozen little dialogues called Proverbs in Porcelain, airy as they are and exquisite, are less favorites with me than they are with critics whose taste I cannot but think finer than mine—Mr. Aldrich, for instance, and Mr. Stedman. I am inclined to believe I like them less because they assume a dramatic form without warrant. The essence of the drama is action, and in these beautiful and witty playlets there is but the ghost of an action. I doubt not that I am unfair to these dialogues, and that my attitude toward them is that of the dramatic critic rather than that of the critic of poetry pure and simple. But that is their own fault for assuming a virtue they have not. To counterbalance this harsh treatment of the Proverbs in Porcelain, I must declare that I take more pleasure in 'A Virtuoso' than do most of Mr. Dobson's admirers, and for the same reason. I find in 'A Virtuoso' all the condensed compactness of the best stage dialogue, where a phrase has to be stripped to run for its life. To be read quickly by the fireside, 'A Virtuoso' may seem forced; but to be acted or recited, it is just right. I see in this cold and cutting poem, masterly in its synthesis of selfish symptoms, a regard for theatrical perspective, and a selection and a heightening of effect in accordance with the needs of the stage, which I confess I fail to find in the seemingly more dramatic Proverbs in Porcelain. Most people, however, liking Mr. Dobson mainly for playful tenderness and tender playfulness, dislike the marble hardness of 'A Virtuoso,' just as they are annoyed by the tone of 'A Love-letter,' one of the poet's cleverest pieces. If Mr. Dobson yielded to the likes and dislikes of his admirers he would soon sink into sentimentality, and he would never dare to write as funny as he can. There are readers who are shocked and pained when they discover the non-existence of 'Dorothy.'

After all, this is perhaps the highest compliment that readers can pay the writer, when they enter so heartily into his creations that they revolt against any trick he may play upon them. And in these days of haste without rest, it ill becomes us to fling the first stone at an author who is enamored of elusive perfection and who is willing to spare no pains to give us his best and only his best. He may be thankful that he is not as infertile on the one hand as Waller, who was "the greater part of a summer correcting ten lines for Her Grace of York's copy of Tasso," or as reckless on the other hand as Martial, who disdained to elaborate:

Turpe est difficile habere nugas
Et stultus labor est ineptiarum.

Not infrequently do we find Mr. Frederick Locker and Mr. Dobson classed together as though their work was fundamentally of the same kind. The present writer has to plead guilty to the charge of inadvertently and inaccurately linking the two names in critical discussion. The likeness is accidental rather than essential, and the hasty conjunction is due, perhaps, more to the fact that they are friends, and that they both write what has to be called vers de société, than to any real likeness between their works. The fact is, the more clearly we define, and the more precisely we limit the phrase vers de société, the more exactly do we find the best and most characteristic of Mr. Locker's poems agreeing with the definition and lying at ease within the limitation; while the best and most characteristic of Mr. Dobson's poems would be left outside. In his criticism of Praed's work prefixed to the selection from his poems in the fourth volume of Mr. Ward's English Poets Mr. Dobson declares that "as a writer of 'society verse' in its exacter sense, Praed was justly acknowledged to be supreme," and then he adds, "We say 'exacter sense' because it has of late become the fashion to apply this vague term in the vaguest way possible so as to include almost all verse but the highest and the lowest. This is manifestly a mistake. Society verse as Praed understood it, and as we understand it in Praed, treats almost exclusively of the votum, timor, ira, voluptas (and especially the voluptas) of that charmed circle of uncertain limits known conventionally as 'good society'—those latter-day Athenians who, in town and country, spend their time in telling or hearing some new thing, and whose graver and deeper impulses are subordinated to a code of artificial manners." Of these it is indisputable that Mr. Locker is, as Praed was, the laureate-elect, and that "the narrow world in which they move is the main haunt and region of his song." Mr. Locker writes as one to the manner born, and nowhere reveals the touch of the parvenu which betrayed Praed now and again. In the exact sense of the phrase, Mr. Locker, like Praed, is the poet of society, which Mr. Dobson is not—because, for one thing, we may doubt whether society is of quite so much interest or importance or significance to him as to the author of 'London Lyrics.' The distinction is evasive, and has to be suggested rather than said; but it is none the less real and vital. It is, perhaps, rather that Mr. Dobson is more a man of letters, while Mr. Locker is more a man of the world. Certainly Mr. Dobson has a more consciously literary style than Mr. Locker, a style less simple and less direct. Henri Monnier would say that Mr. Dobson had more mots d'auteur. Admirable as is Mr. Dobson's verse, it has not the condensed clearness nor the incisive vigor of Mr. Locker's. One inclines to the opinion that the author of 'London Lyrics' is willing to make more sacrifices for vernacular terseness than the author of Vignettes in Rhyme. It is not that Mr. Dobson is one of the poets who keep their choicest wares locked in an inner safe guarded by heavy bolts, and to whose wisdom no man may help himself unless he has the mystic letters which unlock the massive doors, but he is not quite willing to be simple to the point of bareness as is Mr. Locker, who wears his heart upon his sleeve. In some things Mr. Locker is like Mr. du Maurier, even in the little Gallic twist, while Mr. Dobson is rather like Randolph Caldecott or our own Abbey, with the quaint Englishry of whose style Mr. Dobson's has much in common. Yet after saying this I feel inclined to take it all back, for I recall together 'This was the Pompadour's fan' and 'This is Gerty's glove'—and here it is Mr. Dobson who is brilliant and French and Mr. Locker who is more simple in sentiment and more English. Yet again it is the worldly-minded Mr. Locker who declares that

The world's as ugly, aye, as sin—
And nearly as delightful,—

a sentiment wholly foreign to Mr. Dobson's feelings. This suggests that there is a certain town stamp in the appropriately named 'London Lyrics' not to be seen in Vignettes in Rhyme, some of which are vignettes from rural nature. But both books are boons to be thankful for. Both are havens of rest in days of depression; both have a joyousness most tonic and wholesome in these days when the general tone of literature is gray; both preach the gospel of sanity, and both may serve as antiseptics against sentimental decay.

Here occasion serves to say that each of these masters of what Dr. Johnson, while declaring its difficulty, called "easy verse," has set forth his views of the art of writing vers de société. Mr. Locker made his declaration of faith in the admirable preface, all too brief, to the selection of vers de société and vers d'occasion, which he published in 1867 as 'Lyra Elegantiarum.' Mr. Dobson, at the request of the present writer, drew up a code for the composition of familiar verse. Here are Mr. Dobson's 'Twelve Good Rules':

I. Never be vulgar.

II. Avoid slang and puns.

III. Avoid inversions.

IV. Be sparing of long words.

V. Be colloquial, but not commonplace.

VI. Choose the lightest and brightest of measures.

VII. Let the rhymes be frequent, but not forced.

VIII. Let them be rigorously exact to the ear.

IX. Be as witty as you like.

X. Be serious by accident.

XI. Be pathetic with the greatest discretion.

XII. Never ask if the writer of these rules has observed them himself.

Mr. Dobson has not confined his labors in prose to the canons of familiar verse. Although it is as a poet that he is most widely known, his prose has qualities of its own. Besides scattering magazine articles, it includes half a dozen apt and alert criticisms in Mr. Ward's English Poets, the final chapter in Mr. Lang's little book on the Library, and prefaces to a facsimile reprint of Robinson Crusoe, and to the selection from Herrick's poems, illustrated by Mr. Abbey with such abundant sympathy and such delightful grace and fancy. More important than these are the volumes in which Mr. Dobson has given us selections from the best of the Eighteenth Century Essays, and in which he has introduced and annotated the 'Fables' of John Gay, the 'Poems' and 'Vicar of Wakefield' of Oliver Goldsmith, the 'Essays' of Richard Steele, and the 'Barbier de Seville' of Beaumarchais.

Still more important are the biographical sketches of his favorite Hogarth, and of Bewick and his pupils; and the lives of Fielding, Steele, and Goldsmith. It was to Mr. Dobson's biography that Mr. Lowell referred when he unveiled Miss Margaret Thomas's bust of Fielding in the Somersetshire hall. In the course of his speech, as rich and eloquent as only his speeches are, Mr. Lowell said that "Mr. Austin Dobson has done, perhaps, as true a service as one man of letters ever did to another, by reducing what little is known of the life of Fielding from chaos to coherence, by ridding it of fable, by correcting and coördinating dates, by cross-examining tradition till it stammeringly confessed that it had no visible means of subsistence, and has thus enabled us to get some authentic glimpse of the man as he really was. Lessing gives the title of 'Rescues' to the essays in which he strove to rehabilitate such authors as had been, in his judgment, unjustly treated by their contemporaries, and Mr. Dobson's essay deserves to be reckoned in the same category. He has rescued the body of Fielding from beneath the swinish hoofs which were trampling it as once they trampled the Knight of La Mancha, whom Fielding so heartily admired."

It has been well said that the study of practice of verse is the best of trainings for the writing of prose. Mr. Dobson's prose style is firm and precise; it has no taint of the Corinthian luxuriance which Mr. Matthew Arnold has castigated, or of the passionate emphasis which passes for criticism in some quarters. His ideal in prose writing is a style exact and cool and straightforward. Sometimes the reader might like a little more glow. It is not that his prose style is sapless, for it has life; it is rather that it is generally cut-and-dried of malice prepense. He can write prose with more color and more heat when he chooses, as he who will may see in the paragraphs of the preface to Mr. Abbey's Herrick. In general, however, Mr. Dobson forgets that he is a poet when he takes up his pen to write prose, and he remembers only that he is an antiquary and an investigator. In fact, his prose is the prose of a scientific historian; and Mr. Dobson has the scientific virtues,—the passion for exactness, the untiring patience in research, and the unwillingness to set down anything which has not been proved. If we apply De Quincey's classification, we should declare that Mr. Dobson's poetry—like all true poetry—belongs to the literature of power, while his prose belongs to the literature of knowledge.

It is to be remarked, also, that the poet sometimes remembers that he is an antiquary, also. Here Mr. Dobson is not unlike Walter Scott, who was also an antiquary-poet, with a strong love for the past, and a gift for making dead figures start to life at his bidding. Much of Mr. Dobson's poetry is like his prose in that it is based on research. His learning in the manners and customs of past times is most minute. Especially rich is his knowledge of the people and of the vocabulary of the eighteenth century. This is the result of indefatigable delving in the records of the past. His acquaintance with the ways and words of the contemporaries of Steele and of Fielding and of Hogarth is as thorough as Lord Tennyson's knowledge of botany, for instance; and it is the proof of as much minute observation. Although Mr. Dobson disdains all second-hand information, and likes to verify facts for himself, he never lets his learning burden his verse. That runs as freely and as trippingly as though the seeking of the facts on which it might be founded had not been a labor of love, for which no toil was too great. The 'Ballad of Beau Brocade' is a strong and simple tale, seemingly calling for no special study; but it does not contain a single word not in actual use at the time of the guidebook where it germinated, and in print in the pages of the Gentleman's Magazine of that reign. In like manner, in the noble and virile ballade of the Armada, which the Virgin Queen might have joyed to accept, there is no single word not in Gervase Markham.

Writing always out of the fulness of knowledge, there is nowhere anything amateurish, and there is always a perfect certainty of touch. His work—as Mr. W. C. Brownell has told us—is "as natural an outgrowth as Lamb's." And he is like Lamb in that capacity for taking infinite pains which has been held the true trade-mark of genius. He is like Lamb, again, in that he has resolutely recognized his limitations. Ruler of his own territory, he has carefully refrained from crossing his neighbor's boundaries. Indeed, he is as admirable an instance as one could wish of the exactness of Swift's dictum, "It is an uncontrolled truth that no man ever made an ill figure who understood his own talents, nor a good one who mistook them."