for some time in Cheyne Row, Chelsea, with D.G. Rossetti (q.v.), and G. Meredith (q.v.). The appearance in 1865 of Atalanta in Calydon led to his immediate recognition as a poet of the first order, and in the same year he pub. Chastelard, a Tragedy, the first part of a trilogy relating to Mary Queen of Scots, the other two being Bothwell (1874), and Mary Stuart (1881). Poems and Ballads, pub. in 1866, created a profound sensation alike among the critics and the general body of readers by its daring departure from recognised standards, alike of politics and morality, and gave rise to a prolonged and bitter controversy, S. defending himself against his assailants in Notes on Poems and Reviews. His next works were the Song of Italy (1867) and Songs before Sunrise (1871). Returning to the Greek models which he had followed with such brilliant success in Atalanta he produced Erechtheus (1876), the extraordinary metrical power of which won general admiration. Poems and Ballads, second series, came out in 1878. Tristram of Lyonnesse in heroic couplets followed in 1882, A Midsummer Holiday (1884), Marino Faliero (1885), Locrine (1887), Poems and Ballads, third series (1889), The Sisters (1892), Astrophel (1894), The Tale of Balen (1896), Rosamund, Queen of the Lombards (1899), A Channel Passage (1904), and The Duke of Gandia (1908). Among his prose works are Love's Cross Currents (1905) (fiction), William Blake, a Critical Essay (1867), Under the Microscope (1872), in answer to R. Buchanan's Fleshly School of Poetry, George Chapman, a Critical Essay (1875), A Study of Shakespeare (1879), A Study of Victor Hugo (1886), and A Study of Ben Jonson (1889).
S. belongs to the class of "Poets' poets." He never became widely popular. As a master of metre he is hardly excelled by any of our poets, but it has not seldom been questioned whether his marvellous sense of the beauty of words and their arrangement did not exceed the depth and mass of his thought. The Hymn to Artemis in Atalanta beginning "When the hounds of Spring are on Winter's traces" is certainly one of the most splendid examples of metrical power in the language. As a prose writer he occupies a much lower place, and here the contrast between the thought and its expression becomes very marked, the latter often becoming turgid and even violent. In his earlier days in London S. was closely associated with the pre-Raphaelites, the Rossettis, Meredith, and Burne-Jones: he was thus subjected successively to the classical and romantic influence, and showed the traces of both in his work. He was never m., and for the last 30 years of his life lived with his friend, Mr. Theodore Watts-Dunton, at the Pines, Putney Hill. For some time before his death he was almost totally deaf.
Sylvester, Joshua (1563-1618). Poet and translator, is chiefly remembered by his translation from the French of Du Bartas' Divine Weeks and Works, which is said to have influenced Milton and Shakespeare. He seconded the Counterblast against Tobacco of James I. with his Tobacco Battered and the Pipes Shattered ... by a Volley of Holy Shot Thundered from Mount Helicon (1620), and also wrote All not Gold that Glitters, Panthea: Divine Wishes and Meditations (1630), and many religious, complimentary, and other occasional pieces. S., who was originally engaged in commerce, acted later as a sort of factor to the Earl of Essex.
