English poet, born at Lancaster on the 10th of August 1869; educated at St. Paul’s school, London, and Trinity College, Oxford, where he won the Newdigate prize in 1890 for his Persephone. He entered the department of printed books at the British Museum in 1893, and was transferred to the department of prints and drawings in 1895, the Catalogue of English Drawings in the British Museum (1898, &c.) being by him. As a poet he is represented by Lyric Poems (1894), Poems (Oxford, 1895), London Visions (2 vols., 1895–1898), The Praise of Life (1896), Porphyrion and other Poems (1898), Odes (1900), The Death of Adam (1903), Penthesilea (1903), Dream come true (1905), Paris and Oenone (1906), a one-act tragedy, and Attila, a poetical drama (1907); as an art critic by monographs on the 17th-century Dutch etchers, on John Crome and John Sell Cotman, contributed to the Portfolio, &c. In 1906 he published the first volume of a series of reproductions from William Blake, with a critical introduction. He produced after 1910 a book on Botticelli (1913); a catalogue of Japanese woodcuts in the British Museum (1917); The Art of Asia (1915); English Poetry in Relation to Painting and other Arts (1918); For Dauntless France (1918) and Court Painters of the Great Mogul (1920); as well as certain collections of poems, Auguries (1913) and The Four Years (1919), the last of which gathered together his fine war poems, which had previously appeared in several smaller collections. In 1920 his play Sakuntala was performed in London.
See also R. A. Streatfeild, Two Poets of the New Century (1901), and W. Archer, Poets of the Younger Generation (1902). (See authored articles: Sir Edward Burne-Jones, Cecil Gordon Lawson.) See also “A Song,” etc.
