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Let us hasten to offer up our small tribute of praise and thanks to Mr. Clarke for his critical sagacity here, and let us venture to hope that the “Poems of Adam Lindsay Gordon” may go down to posterity accompanied always by this small “Preface” of Mr. Clarke, who both “knew the man” and was yet the first to appreciate this aspect of his work.

What, however, Mr. Clarke has to say about the facts of Gordon’s life is, at best, inaccurate. It is Mr. Sutherland to whom our gratitude is due here, gratitude for having discovered for us all the details of the poet’s life which it is necessary for us to know.[2]

What, then, remains for any other critic to do? There remains to him, as it seems to me, the task of doing what Mr. Clarke tells us he did not propose to do, “of criticising these volumes,” and also of trying, as befits one who comes later, and to whom, therefore, the events of the past have fallen into that symmetry and proper proportion that the events of the present can scarcely ever fall into: of trying, I say, to bring out more clearly (one aspect of which he has done little more than indicate), the real, deep, true significance of the poet’s work; in a word, of trying to understand, instead of being “astonished” at it.