Alice: An Adultery

writing round her, perfectly conscious all the time of the shame of it all, and filled with an eternal inner laughter. We have heard what a woman he married in the end. Our poet is one of the most annoying in the world. His fiftieth day is an outrage on mankind in its sudden and hideous close. He himself feels it, and writes the two following sonnets to discuss (and so to modify) the hateful impression. But through pig-headedness, or in very despair, he leaves the detestable fact standing, the very instant after the lovers part, as ugly and mean a summary of the whole affair as it is possible to imagine. Of the bad taste of the whole poem nobody can have any doubt, with its ruthless analysis of every- thing, its frank and brutal physiology, its mean and sordid outlook—all these contrasting with glimpses all too rare of exquisite synthesis, delicacy of feeling almost extreme, and a large and noble view of the universe. He seems to love to play off one against the other, and the result is a perpetual jarring : stimulus of thought, perhaps allowable, xix