Phantom-Wooer: The Thomas Lovell Beddoes Web Site | Critical Response

RICHARD HENRY STODDARD, 1892

“No nineteenth century English poet with whom I am acquainted, ever promised more and performed less than Thomas Lovell Beddoes, whose verse, like his life, was a wayward fragment...There were the makings of a greater poet in Beddoes than he ever became, except at intervals, and in his most inspired moments; and the poet that he might have been, if fully developed, is of a kind that English poetry has long since outgrown. He belonged to the same guild of dramatists as Marlowe, Tourneur, and Webster, but where they were masters, he was an apprentice. There were the same dark elements in his genius as in theirs, but they were more confused and tumultuous, more chaotic than creative, and more horrible than terrible.”

(Under the Evening Lamp, pp, 200, 210)

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