Many American readers have enjoyed Mr.
Cawein's productions.... But the appreciation of his poetry has never
been as great as its merits would indicate. His poems are rather _too
good_ to be caught up on the babbling tongue and cast forth into mere
popularity. They are caviare to the general; and yet they have in them
the best elements of popular favor.
"Cawein is a classicist. He will have it that poems, however humble
the theme, however tender the sentiment, shall wear a tasteful Attic
dress. I do not intimate that Mr. Cawein's mind has been too much
saturated with the classical spirit or that his native instincts have
been supplanted with Greek exotics and flowers out of the renaissance,
but rather that his own mental constitution is of a classical as well
as a romantic mould.
"The themes of Cawein's poetry are generally taken from the world of
romance. If there be any modern bard who can recreate a mediaeval
castle and give to its inhabitants the sentiments which were theirs in
the twelfth century, Cawein is the poet who can.
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