Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER V 'ST. ABE AND HIS SEVEN WIVES, ' 'WHITE ROSE AND RED, ' WITH A NOTE ON CRITICISM The year 1873 will always have a unique place in the bibliographical history of Mr. Buchanan. It was in this year that he risked a fall with the Philistine, and succeeded even beyond his most ambitious hope. 'The Ishmael of Song' had the courage to publish the two volumes, 'St. Abe and his Seven Wives, ' and 'White Rose and Red, ' anonymously, with the result that he soon had his enemies in his net. With unanimous voice those who had scourged the poet before joined in the song of praise. 'Pest on Mr. Buchanan's dreaming to oblivion with all such aspiring versifiers here we have a poet indeed?here is altogether the true characteristic of genius ' and so on. The poet was a poet of patience. ' St. Abe' ran rapidly into four or five editions, and then the thunderbolt burst. The author of ' St. Abe' was Robert Buchanan, the Ishmael of Song, the outcast Scotsman?he who sang of trulls and costermongers?'the Celtic madman'; and there was sadness over the land. The present writer cannot go back to those stirring days in the literary dovecots, but an inquiry into the reception which was accorded by the Press leaves him with the conclusion, that the poet reached his high-water mark of contemporary praise in the testimony which was accorded to him in his anonymous robes. From the facts associated with the publication and critical reception of these poems, and calling to mind the aspect of the critics before and at the time of their publication, and the recoil which took place when the secret was out, are we to infer that the golden era of criticism is but an ephemeron floating in dreamland ? There is a deadly want of the sense of humour in attacking criticism as a whole. Burke said something