SOURCE: “A Note on Robert Buchanan,” in Pre-Raphaelite and Other Poets, edited by John Erskine, Dodd, Mead and Company, 1922, pp. 386-406.

In the following essay, Hearn offers a laudatory overview of Buchanan's poetry, focusing on the “Ballad of Judas Iscariot.”

Among the minor poets of the Victorian period, Robert Buchanan cannot be passed over unnoticed. A contemporary of all the great singers, he seems to have been always a little isolated; I mean that he formed no strong literary friendships within the great circle. Most great poets must live to a certain extent in solitude; the man who can at once mix freely in society and find time for the production of masterpieces is a rare phenomenon. George Meredith is said to be such a person. But Tennyson, Rossetti, Swinburne, Browning, Fitzgerald, were all very reserved and retired men, though they had little circles of their own, and...