for a long time. As I read it stanza after stanza, with not an imperfect verse, not a commonplace, but with a sustained increase of pure sentiment and glowing fancy, I was inclined to place it beside Shelley's. It is[Pg xix] not so intellectual as Shelley's, but I am not sure that it is not truer. Mackay's is the lark itself, Shelley's is himself listening to the lark. Besides Shelley makes the lark sing at evening—as I believe it does—but surely 'it to the morning doth belong,' and Shakespeare is truer in putting it at 'Heaven's gate.' It is a great refreshment to us tired workers in the prose of life to come across such a poem as this, and seldom enough it happens nowadays. Tell Mr. Eric Mackay to sing us another song."

[Pg xix]

Paul Hamilton Hayne, an American poet, praised it in an American paper; and the cultured Maurice Thompson writes:—"This lark-song touches the best mark of simplicity, sweetness, and naturalness in its modelling."

This admired lyric was copied from the Independent into many other journals, together with several other poems by the same hand, such as[Pg xx] "A Vision of Beethoven," the beautiful verses addressed to the Spanish violinist, Pablo de Sarasate, and a spirited reply to Algernon Charles Swinburne, reproaching him for the attack which the author of "Tristram of Lyonesse" had made on England's name and fame. One day a simple statement appeared in the Independent respecting the much discussed "Love-Letters by a Violinist," that the author was simply a gentleman of good position, the descendant of a distinguished and very ancient family, Eric Mackay, known among his personal friends and intimates as a man of brilliant and extensive learning, whose frequent and long residences abroad have made him somewhat of a foreigner, though by birth an Englishman. A fine linguist, a deep thinker, a profound student of the classics, Mr. Mackay may be ranked among the most cultured and accomplished men of his day, and still[Pg xxi] young as he is, will undoubtedly be numbered with the choice few whose names are destined to live by the side of poets such as Keats, whom, as far as careful work, delicate feeling, and fiery tenderness go, Eric Mackay may be said to resemble, though there is a greater robustness and force in his muse, indicative of a strong mind in an equally strong and healthy body, which latter advantage the divine Keats had not, unfortunately for himself and the world. The innate, hardly restrained vigour of Mr. Mackay's nature shows itself in such passages as occur in the sonnets, "Remorse," "A Thunderstorm at Night;" also in the wild and terribly suggestive "Zulalie," while 

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