SOURCE: “Thomas Lovell Beddoes,” in Thomas Lovell Beddoes, Vol. 11, No. 3, July, 1903, pp. 306-36.

In the following essay, Miller discusses the defining characteristics of Beddoes's works, concluding that his “genius is undeniable, but it is limited in scope.”

Among minor English poets, there is no more striking figure than Thomas Lovell Beddoes, a man of unique personality and versatile talents. Between 1821-26, the five years of mediocrity which followed the deaths of Keats, Shelley, and Byron, and preceded the outburst of song in the Victorian Era, it is claimed by Mr. Edmund Gosse that “Beddoes was the most interesting talent engaged in writing English verse.” It was during these years of exhaustion that he produced his best poems; in later life he ceased to write except as a pastime. Mr. Gosse points out, furthermore, that the effect of writing at such a period “dwarfed, restrained, and finaly quenched Beddoes's...