Coventry Patmore . ten apage of prose, with the perfunctory exceptionof the Bryan Waller Procter^ which he hadpublished in 1877 ; in earher youth, thepractice of prose writing had affordedhim profit and satisfaction. It appearedto me that it would now add alike tohis usefulness and to his enjoyment if heresumed composition. Verse he had re-luctantly abandoned for some time (I thinkthat his very latest printed poem dates from1880), on the ground that he had sung whathe could not help singing, and that nothingshould be torn from a reluctant muse. ButI could see no reason why his exquisitelylucid
Coventry Patmore . ten apage of prose, with the perfunctory exceptionof the Bryan Waller Procter^ which he hadpublished in 1877 ; in earher youth, thepractice of prose writing had affordedhim profit and satisfaction. It appearedto me that it would now add alike tohis usefulness and to his enjoyment if heresumed composition. Verse he had re-luctantly abandoned for some time (I thinkthat his very latest printed poem dates from1880), on the ground that he had sung whathe could not help singing, and that nothingshould be torn from a reluctant muse. ButI could see no reason why his exquisitelylucid prose should not be given to the my first suggestions of this kind, he re-plied that the little working power I haveleft in me is hes-poken^ meaning that he hadnot lost the hope that he might yet be in-spired to continue the great poem on DivineLove which he had dreamed of at my continued pressure, however, inFebruary 1881, he showed me a MS. transla-tion from St. Bernard on The Love of Gody. Last Tears (1870-1896) 161 which his second wife, who died in 1880, had begun and he had completed. This he said I might find a publisher for, if I could, and I took it up to London with me. Mr. Kegan Paul consented to print it, and a few months later it appeared. This is a very delightful treatise, far too little known. It is always exciting to a retired author to smell printers ink once more, and Patmore forthwith started the composition of that Sponsa Dei, of which I shall presently have a doleful tale to tell. The latest of his poems, to which reference has just been made, is the Scire Teipsum, which opens thus:— Musing I met, in no strange land, What meet thou must to understand : An angel. There was none but he, Yet twas a glorious company : God, Youth and Goddess, one, twain, trine, In altering wedlock, flamed, benign, which has always appeared to me an absolutelytypical specimen of the peculiar Patmorianquintessence. In sending me the MS. ofthese verses (J
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