Chapter Parkman to Patmore of P by Biographical Dictionary of English Literature

were collected and published as Studies in the History of the Renaissance (1873); Appreciations (1889) contained his great essays on Æsthetic Poetry and Style, various Shakespearian studies and papers on Lamb and Sir T. Browne; Imaginary Portraits, and Greek Studies (1894); Plato and Platonism (1893). His masterpiece, however, is Marius the Epicurean (1885), a philosophical romance of the time of Marcus Aurelius. The style of Pater is characterised by a subdued richness, and complicated, but perfect structure of sentences. In character he was gentle, refined, and retiring, with a remarkable suavity of manner and dislike of controversy.

Patmore, Coventry Kersey Dighton (1823-1896).—Poet, son of Peter George Patmore, also an author, born at Woodford, Essex, was in the printed book department of the British Museum. He published Tamerton Church Tower (1853), and between 1854 and 1862 the four poems which, combined, form his masterpiece, The Angel in the House, a poetic celebration of married love. In 1864 he entered the Church of Rome. Thereafter he published The Unknown Eros (1877), Amelia (1878), and Rod, Root, and Flower (1895), meditations chiefly on religious subjects. His works are full of graceful and suggestive thought, but occasionally suffer from length and discursiveness. He was succesful in business matters, and in character was energetic, masterful, and combative. He numbered Tennyson and Ruskin among his friends, was associated with the pre-Raphaelites, and was a contributor to their organ, the Germ.