PATMORE, COVENTRY KERSEY DIGHTON (1823 1896), English poet and critic, the eldest son of Peter George Patmore, himself an author, was born at Woodford in Essex, on July 23, 1823. He was privately educated, being his father's inti mate and constant companion. His first idea was to be an artist, but after a brief experiment he turned to literature. In 1844 he published Poems, a book which was ill-received by the critics. Patmore withdrew and destroyed the remainder of the edition. But the publication of this little volume introduced its author to various men of letters, among whom were Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Holman Hunt, and he was thus drawn into the eddies of the pre-Raphaelite movement, contributing his poem "The Seasons" to the Germ. At this time Patmore's father became involved in financial embarrassments; and in 1846 Monckton Milnes secured for the son an assistant-librarianship in the British Museum, a post which he occupied industriously for nineteen years, devoting his spare time to poetry. In 1847 he married Emily Andrews.
In 1853 he republished, in Tamerton Church Tower, the more successful pieces from the Poems of 1844, adding several new poems which showed distinct advance, both in conception and treatment ; and in the following year (1854) appeared the first part of his best known poem, "The Angel in the House," which was continued in "The Espousals" (1856), "Faithful for Ever" (186o), and "The Victories of Love" (1862). In 1862 he lost his wife, after a long and lingering illness, and shortly afterwards joined the Roman Catholic Church. In 1865 he married again,
his second wife being Marianne Byles ; and a year later purchased an estate in East Grinstead, the history of which may be read in How I managed my Estate, published in 1886. In 1877 appeared The Unknown Eros; and in the following year Amelia, his own favourite among his poems, together with an interesting, though by no means undisputable, essay on English Metrical Law. This was followed by Principle in Art (1879) and Religio poetae (1893). After the death of his second wife in 188o he married Harriet Robson. In later years he lived at Lymington, where he died on Nov. 26, 1896.
A collected edition of his poems appeared in two volumes in 1886, with a characteristic preface which might serve as the author's epitaph. "I have written little," it runs; "but it is all my best; I have never spoken when I had nothing to say, nor spared time or labour to make my words true. I have respected posterity; and should there be a posterity which cares for letters, I dare to hope that it will respect me." His best work is found in the volume of odes called The Unknown Eros, which is full not only of passages but of entire poems in which exalted thought is expressed in poetry of the richest and most dignified melody.
(A. WA.) The standard life of Patmore is the Memoirs and Correspondence 0900, edited by Basil Champneys. See also E. W. Gosse, Coventry Patmore (19o5) ; essay by Mrs. Meynell (19°5) in the "Muses' Li brary"; Portrait of My Family, D. Patmore (1935).