VOL. X.

No. 1.

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, NEW YORK.

R

ECENT events have directed public attention to Mr. Watson's work, but the interest of that work in no sense depends on grants from the Royal Bounty Fund or reports of a possible succession to the place which Tennyson made great, as had Wordsworth before him. Mr. Watson has been recognized for several years past as a poet whose verse, although small in volume, gave evidence of his possession of poetic gifts of a high order, and gave promise of notable work in the future. So little has been know of his personal history that a few facts significant of his surroundings, growth and character can hardly fail to interest the readers of THE BOOK BUYER.

Mr. Watson is the youngest son of Mr. John Watson, who was, like Mr. Gladstone's father, a Liverpool merchant. Born in 1856, Mr. Watson's early years were notable rather for the things from which he was cut off than for the things he achieved; for until his twelfth year pronounced physical delicacy excluded him from the public schools, to one of which he would naturally have gone. In his twelfth year the removal of the family to Southport, a well-known watering-place on the Lancashire coast, speedily wrought a beneficial and permanent change for the better, and the delicate boy became vigorous and active, although of a very sensitive nervous organization. The private

schools at Southport did something for him in the way of education, but he did more for himself, for he had access to the best books, and he loved them from childhood.

Three fortunate circumstances gave Mr. Watson's childhood the deepest and richest educational impulses-leisure, books and nature. All men who achieve anything in a creative way are self educated. The schools often aid them greatly, but the training and spiritual nurture which make them masters of the truth they are to teach or the beauty they are to illustrate are personal and individual. This deeper education Mr. Watson gained for himself from long, unbroken hours of companionship with the poets, and from constant rambles along the Lancashire sea-coast and frequent excursions into the country immortalized by Wordsworth. From his earliest youth he has been a passionate lover of poetry and a tireless student of the poets, and much of this study has been carried forward not in a library, but afield, amid some of the most beautiful scenery in England. No poet could have had a riper training for his art than this double communion with nature and the masters of English speech.

Although Mr. Watson's taste is catholic, Shelley and Keats were the masters of his youth, and exercised the greatest influence over him during the formative period. Wordsworth came later, but with a spell not less potent. He

has characterized the service of the three great singers to him in the lines:

"The first voice, then the second, in their turns Had sung me captive. This voice sang me free."

The most notable poem which he has yet written is that on "Wordsworth's Grave," and we have no finer or truer characterization of the spirit and function of the Westmoreland poet. Mr. Watson's first volume, "The Prince's Quest," was published in 1880. It was unheralded and did not excite wide interest, but the few who read it with open minds found it strong in intellectual quality and touched in parts with genuine power of imagination. In 1884 a second volume came from the same hand under the title "Epigrams of Art, Life, and Nature," rich in clear characterization and in condensed and beautiful phrase. After an interval of six years “Wordsworth's Grave and Other Poems" appeared, and not only confirmed the impression of poetic power made by the earlier verse, but greatly deepened and widened that impression. The notable poem which gave its title to the volume did not fail to command attention from those who are quick to see and recognize not only what is new but what is true. Another slender volume recently issued is chiefly notable by reason of the striking elegy on Tennyson, "Lachrymæ Musarum," and the not less impressive tribute to Shelley. The Messrs. Macmillan have just published a complete edition of Mr. Watson's work in one volume.

But it is not only as a writer of verse that Mr. Watson has made his mark; he is also a writer of vigorous and suggestive prose, and a volume of essays from his hand is also announced for publication in the near future. The introduction which he wrote for Alfred Austin's "English Lyrics" is an admirable example of his critical power and of his command of fresh and incisive English. He is a regular contributor to the columns of the Spectator, the Academy, the National Review, and other well-known English periodicals. He is unmarried, and lives with his mother at Southend, a London suburb, thirty-five miles from the city and near the mouth of the Thames. Attention has been specially directed to him of

late as a possible candidate for the position of Poet Laureate, and the fact that Mr. Gladstone gave official recognition to the elegy on Tennyson by awarding Mr. Watson £200 from the Royal Bounty Fund seemed to give emphasis. to the talk in literary circles. The strong probability of Mr. Watson's speedy recovery from an illness brought on by overwork and nervous excitement disposes effectually of the newspaper reports of a permanent failure of health.

Mr. Watson's verse is not great in volumeis, indeed, scanty for a man of so much force and of such devotion to his art; but it discloses unmistakably the possession of some of the qualities which go to the making of a great poet. It is work of a lofty intention, filled with the spirit which dominates great art, serious in temper and inspired by a conception of the dignity and authority of poetry as the greatest of the arts. Mr. Watson interprets the poet's function as something sacred, and having its eternal sanctity in the truth which it translates into beauty. In truth he has a primary interest, as all the great poets have; and a study of his verse reveals a sustained power of thought of a very high order. Indeed, Mr. Watson's one peril is the predominance of the intellectual over the lyrical quality. He is specially apt in characterization, and the sureness of his touch is seen in the striking phrases descriptive of the genius of Milton, Shakespeare, Shelley, Coleridge and Byron in "Wordsworth's Grave." His musical faculty is, however, adequate to his thought, and, like the later work of Tennyson, seems to gain fulness and richness rather than lightness and facility from the noble freightage of thought committed to it. Insight so keen, intellectual force so marked, and imagination of such pure quality seem to mark Mr. Watson as one of the men of the future.