The daily morning journal and courier., 1896-12-22
---------------------------- COVENTRY PATMORT.

The sudden death of the author or i "The Unknown Eros" does not find his friends wholly unprepared. Rather they are thankful that so valuable life has been preserved to it's seventy fourth year, since MT. Patmore has al- ways been something of a valetudina- rian, and within the last few years has been only preserved by his energy from becoming a confirmed invalid. He
 was aware, and his friends were aware,
 of his perilous condition; only ten days
 ago he wrote to one with whom he had promised to dine in London, Il
 positively dare not come-I might drop dead at your table," He has been spared the huddled unintelligihle
 phrase and frightened eye" which
 he has described so marvellously and
 feared so much; he has passed away in peace among those who loved him
 best, and knows what he sought SO hard to fathom, ''the ardent secret ev- CT clothed with Night" Not the strongest, but certainly one of the most
 penetrating-no the most synpathet- ic, but certainly one of the noblest fig
 ures of our age departs in the person of the austere and delicate Patmore.
 No poet has suffered from stranger
 oscillations of fashion or has seemed to deserve them less From the first to the last, he has written always in
 the same strain, in the same dry white heat; he has offered no hostages to passing taste, and yet he has lived long enough to be successively ignored, taken into universal favor, abruptly and completely neglected, and finally
 restored, not to popularity exactly, but
 to the devoted cultus of distinguish
 ing group. Meanwhile he has never
 changed his key; he has sung of earth
 ly and heavenly love, the one type
 of the other; the first not less tran
 scendental, less sacramental, than the
 second. '@The Angel in the House"
 was accepted by schoolgirls and cu-
 rates; 1t became the wade -mecum" of
 engaged couples, who after their hon.
 eymoon, put the volume back between
 their Longfellow and their Tupper.
 Patmore accepted the collocation with
 grim smile. If the sanctifcation of
 middle-class philandering was all they
 discovered in the poem, what could it
 matter? To friends who desired to see
 the element of realistic triviality purg ed from '"The Angel of the House, who fretted at the "florn to the willing guard" and what Calverly cruelty de- scribed as the scene of 'the balmor-
 als on the corals,'' Patmore sternly re- piled that those who could not detect the spiritual meaning beneath the sym | bol deserved no better illustration.
 | But his disgust was more marked | than he admitted. He winced, un- i occasionally, at the gibes of the crit | ics-"this is tale, not very wise, about l Person and a Spouse" He concen- | trated his expression, he lifted his im-
 agery to a loftier sphere, although the
 essence was yet the same. The result
 was the little book of 'Odes,' after
 wards enlarged and published as 'The | Unknown Eros" These estoeric and | etherealized odes he printed about the year 1868, and distributed few of | them within the narrow circle of his | friends. They were not comprehend l ed neither the attitude, which was | apocalyptic, nor the style, which was
 severe and sculptural to the last de-
 gree, reminded the readers of these "Odes" of the Patmore whom they | thought they knew. Some burning
 audacities of expression were found | shocking. A distinguished poet, a Catholic like himself, recommended | Patmore to seek absolution for certain
 violences of phrase and idea. The po-
 ct in his solitude at Herongsill, deep
 in the Sussex woods, heard hardly a
 whisper of sympathy; he made great
 fire in the hall of his house. and he spent an afternoon, another Jehoiakim, | in shredding the remainder of the "Odes' into the blaze. This original 1 private issue remains, in consequence,
 one of the rarest treasures of nine | teenth-century bibliography.
 1 These, then, are the two main vis- ions of Coventry Patmore's work 1 ''The Angel in the House. with its l concomitant volumes, excessively pop