Sydney Dobell by Alice Meynell

Name: Sydney Dobell
Author: Alice Meynell

Alice Meynell’s “Sydney Dobell” is a critical reappraisal of a poet she believes has suffered from being badly remembered rather than cleanly forgotten. She argues that Dobell’s reputation has been clouded by clumsy memorial praise and by the deadening effect of introductory biographies, which can repel a serious reader before the poems themselves are reached. Meynell presents Dobell as a lyric poet whose finest work depends on what she calls the “short thought”: a poetic conception complete enough to be held within a lyric or sonnet. She sees this quality especially in “Isabel,” where the memory of a spiritually elusive dead woman is joined to the solitary atmosphere of summer dawn. The poem’s strength lies in its concentrated emotional image, its sweetness, and its passionate inwardness. She extends this argument to Dobell’s best-known sonnets, “The Army Surgeon” and “Home in War Time.” These poems, she says, are not serenely great in the highest tragic sense, but they are powerful examples of emotional unrest shaped by imagination and passionate diction. “The Army Surgeon” especially satisfies the sonnet form through a single completed image. Meynell then considers Dobell’s Crimean War poems. She acknowledges that many of their figures are conventional Romantic types: the milkmaid, Lady Constance, the French soldier, the wounded officer, the market wife. Yet she defends Dobell’s use of convention, arguing that he gives these inherited figures genuine warmth and traditional life. Modern poets may create more individualized characters through accident and irregularity, but Dobell’s achievement within Romance convention is not therefore false or careless. One war poem, “Tommy’s Dead,” stands apart for its sharper realism. Meynell admires its portrayal of Tommy’s father as a distinct human being, marked by the stunned dullness of grief and old age. She also values “The Little Girl’s Song,” despite its occasional failure to remain fully childlike, because its emotional urgency justifies the poet’s breaking beyond a child’s limited speech. “Keith of Ravelston” receives particular praise for its mysterious beauty, musical cadence, and artful introduction within the war sequence. Meynell admits that Dobell’s longer works, such as “Balder” and “The Roman,” have not compelled her through to the end. Her final judgment is selective but firm: if Dobell is represented by his best lyrics and protected from his weaker tendencies, he deserves a lasting place in English literature.

By Alice Meynell · First published 1922 · Genre: Literary Criticism, Biographical Essay, Poetry Criticism · 1,678 words

First lines

It would be better to be purely forgotten, and then rediscovered (or not, as may befall) than to be half remembered, or remembered by rumour, as Sydney Dobell seems to have been for many years, and compromised by the praises that send a straightforward reader shying and swerving to left or right-anywhere out of the way of their finger-posts. Oblivion is clean, but not so the encumbered remembrance, and not so the reputation taken into custody and care by the Introductory Memoir.

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Sydney Dobell is listed on Textopian as an essay by Alice Meynell, dated 1922 CE.

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Work type: Essay
Author: Alice Meynell
Date: 1922 CE
Language: English
Genres: Literary Criticism, Biographical Essay, Poetry Criticism, Victorian Literary Studies, Critical Essay
Length: 1,678 words
Structure: 1 section, 15 paragraphs
Reading fit: Fairly Difficult (10th-12th Grade)

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Genres

Literary Criticism — The work primarily evaluates Sydney Dobell's poetry, judging individual poems, diction, imagery, lyric structure, emotional force, and literary reputation.
Biographical Essay — Although not a full biography, the essay considers Dobell's posthumous reputation, contemporary reception, and place among poets of his period.
Poetry Criticism — The central subject is Dobell's lyric and sonnet writing, with close attention to poems such as Isabel, The Army Surgeon, Home in War Time, Tommy's Dead, and Keith of Ravelston.
Victorian Literary Studies — The essay situates Dobell within nineteenth-century English poetry, Romantic inheritance, Crimean War verse, and Victorian habits of admiration and memorial writing.