SOURCE: Garvin, Louis. “Coventry Patmore: The Praise of the Odes.” The Fortnightly Review 61 (1 February 1897): 207-17.

In the following essay, Garvin traces Patmore's poetic maturation and deems The Unknown Eros to be “a rich and singular addition to the treasure of English poetry.”

The few to whom The Unknown Eros came like a revelation in literature and a gift to life, must seem to speak a little extravagantly. They are acutely conscious of uttering incredible opinions when they hold The Unknown Eros to be, on the whole, the most significant volume of great verse that has appeared in England since Keats's last—the loveliest and most poignant, the most purely compact of essential poetry. The conviction of Mr. Patmore's greatness, both in vision and faculty, has been borne in upon a minority not conscious of the over-emphatic habit, or of the mere vanity of peculiar preferences, or of any...