Twelve or thirteen years ago, Alice Meynell introduced me to Mr. Frederick Page in her drawing-room at Granville Place, and we talked about Patmore. He sent me Patmore’s Courage in Politics afterwards, as a memento of that talk. In those days one met fewer devout students of this English and Catholic philosopher and poet. I, ever since, have been waiting for the book on Patmore which Mr. Page was already planning.

It has at last been published: Patmore : a Study in Poetry. (Oxford University Press).

The nervous and just prose in which it is written strikes one as being, in itself, homage to Mrs. Meynell, from one who, for more than three dozen years, has known her standards of accuracy and lucidity. But in the Acknowledgments there is a compliment superb, austere and delicate enough to become her. ‘Through Patmore,’ he writes, ‘I became a pupil of Alice Meynell, and our love for him brought me her friendship. That in the following pages I mention her name almost always only to differ from her slightly, is to be ascribed to that vigilance, that care for justice, which, more than from anyone else, and almost more than anything else, I learned from her. If I have said anything to which she would not consent, then I have said what is not true.’

I should like to think, as I handle this lean and well-considered book, that it is only a first slice of the contribution Mr. Page is ready to make to Patmoreana.