William James Linton:

99) Love-Lore and other, early and late Poems,

New Haven / CT 1895

Includes a hand-written dedication and an embedded letter by Linton.

The collection is illustrated with an enlarged stock of minute Claribel emblems and compiles three lyrical cylces: Love-Lore, a batch of one hundred short poems, which was first published by the Appledore Press in 1887 in a limited edition of 50, Heart Easings, first published in 1881, and the Catullus variations In Dispraise of a Woman, first published in 1886 in a limited edition of 25. “Some of the poems are playful and whimsical, others pensive and tender; but all are free and unconstrained. The collection consists entirely of the poet’s latest work, but Mr. Linton is one of those who never grow old. His notes are sweeter and clearer to-day than they were fifty years ago. He has closely studied the Elizabethan poets; and in Love-Lore the traces of this study are clearly noticeable. Noticeable is the influence of Landor. It is not surprisingly that Mr. Linton’s imitative faculty has been quickened; for he is a wood-engraver and a poet afterwards.” (Arthur Henry Bullen)

The variety of thirty translations, which he had made of a single poem by Catullus No. 70: In Dispraise of a Woman is praised by Francis Barrymore Smith: “The best of them are at least as sprightly and effective as the handful of better-known recent translations. The collection is one more instance of Linton’s quirkiness. Few Victorians admitted to an acquaintance with Catullus´ ribaldries. Fewer still admitted to translating them.”