REVIEWS

To Mrs. CAREW

The apparently endless difficulties against which I have contended, andam contending, in the management of Oscar Wilde's literary and dramaticproperty have brought me many valued friends; but only one friendshipwhich seemed as endless; one friend's kindness which seemed to annul thedisappointments of eight years. That is why I venture to place your nameon this volume with the assurance of the author himself who bequeathed tome his works and something of his indiscretion. 

ROBERT ROSS

May 12th, 1908. 

INTRODUCTION

The editor of writings by any author not long deceased is censured sooneror later for his errors of omission or commission. I have decided to erron the side of commission and to include in the uniform edition ofWilde's works everything that could be identified as genuine. Wilde'sliterary reputation has survived so much that I think it proof againstany exhumation of articles which he or his admirers would have preferredto forget. As a matter of fact, I believe this volume will prove ofunusual interest; some of the reviews are curiously prophetic; some are, of course, biassed by prejudice hostile or friendly; others are conceivedin the author's wittiest and happiest vein; only a few are colourless. And if, according to Lord Beaconsfield, the verdict of a continentalnation may be regarded as that of posterity, Wilde is a much greaterforce in our literature than even friendly contemporaries ever supposedhe would become. 

It should be remembered, however, that at the time when most of thesereviews were written Wilde had published scarcely any of the works bywhich his name has become famous in Europe, though the protagonist of theaesthetic movement was a well-known figure in Paris and London. Later hewas recognised--it would be truer to say he was ignored--as a young manwho had never fulfilled the high promise of a distinguished universitycareer although his volume of Poems had reached its fifth edition, anunusual event in those days. He had alienated a great many of his Oxfordcontemporaries by his extravagant manner of dress and his methods ofcourting publicity. The great men of the previous generation, Wilde'sintellectual peers, with whom he was in artistic sympathy, looked on himaskance. Ruskin was disappointed with his former pupil, and Pater didnot hesitate to express disapprobation to private friends; while heaccepted incense from a disciple, he distrusted the thurifer. 

From a large private correspondence in my possession I gather that itwas, oddly enough, in political and social centres that Wilde's amazingpowers were rightly appreciated and where he was welcomed as the mostbrilliant of living talkers. Before he had published anything except hisPoems, the literary dovecots regarded him with dislike, and when he beganto publish essays and fairy stories, the attitude was not changed; it wasmerely emphasised in the public press. His first dramatic success at theSt. James's Theatre gave Wilde, of course, a different position, and thedislike became qualified with envy. Some of the younger men indeed weredazzled, but with few exceptions their appreciation was expressed in anunfortunate manner. It is a consolation or a misfortune that the wrongkind of people are too often correct in their prognostications of thefuture; the far-seeing are also the foolish. 

From these reviews which illustrate the middle period of Wilde's meteoriccareer, between the aesthetic period and the production of LadyWindermere's Fan, we learn _his_ opinion of the contemporaries whothought little enough of him. That he revised many of these opinions, notably those that are harsh, I need scarcely say; and after his releasefrom prison he lost much of his admiration for certain writers. I woulddraw special attention to those reviews of Mr. Swinburne, Mr. WilfridBlunt, Mr. Alfred Austin, the Hon. John Collier, Mr. Brander Matthews andSir Edwin Arnold, Rossetti, Pater, Henley and Morris; they have morepermanent value than the others, and are in accord with the wisercritical judgments of to-day. 

For leave to republish the articles from the Pall Mall Gazette I amindebted to Mr. William Waldorf Astor, the owner of the copyrights, byarrangement with whom they are here reprinted. I have to thank mostcordially Messrs. Cassell and Company for permitting me to reproduce theeditorial articles and reviews contributed by Wilde to the Woman's World;the editor and proprietor of the Nation for leave to include the twoarticles from the Speaker; and the editor of the Saturday Review for asimilar courtesy. For identifying many of the anonymous articles I amindebted to Mr. Arthur Humphreys, not the least of his kindnesses inassisting the publication of this edition; for the trouble of editing, arrangement, and collecting of material I am under obligations to Mr. Stuart Mason for which this acknowledgment is totally inadequate. 

ROBERT ROSSREFORM CLUB, May 12th, 1908

DINNERS AND DISHES

(Pall Mall Gazette, March 7, 1885. )

A man can live for three days without bread, but no man can live for oneday without poetry, was an aphorism of Baudelaire. You can live withoutpictures and music but you cannot live without eating, says the author ofDinners and Dishes; and this latter view is, no doubt, the more popular. Who, indeed, in these degenerate days would hesitate between an ode andan omelette, a sonnet and a salmis? Yet the position is not entirelyPhilistine; cookery is an art; are not its principles the subject ofSouth Kensington lectures, and does not the Royal Academy give a banquetonce a year? Besides, as the coming democracy will, no doubt, insist onfeeding us all on penny dinners, it is well that the laws of cookeryshould be explained: for were the national meal burned, or badlyseasoned, or served up with the wrong sauce a dreadful revolution mightfollow. 

Under these circumstances we strongly recommend Dinners and Dishes toevery one: it is brief and concise and makes no attempt at eloquence, which is extremely fortunate. For even on ortolans who could endureoratory? It also has the advantage of not being illustrated. Thesubject of a work of art has, of course, nothing to do with its beauty, but still there is always something depressing about the colouredlithograph of a leg of mutton. 

As regards the author's particular views, we entirely agree with him onthe important question of macaroni. 'Never, ' he says, 'ask me to back abill for a man who has given me a macaroni pudding. ' Macaroni isessentially a savoury dish and may be served with cheese or tomatoes butnever with sugar and milk. There is also a useful description of how tocook risotto--a delightful dish too rarely seen in England; an excellentchapter on the different kinds of salads, which should be carefullystudied by those many hostesses whose imaginations never pass beyondlettuce and beetroot; and actually a recipe for making Brussels sproutseatable. The last is, of course, a masterpiece. 

The real difficulty that we all have to face in life is not so much thescience of cookery as the stupidity of cooks. And in this littlehandbook to practical Epicureanism the tyrant of the English kitchen isshown in her proper light. Her entire ignorance of herbs, her passionfor extracts and essences, her total inability to make a soup which isanything more than a combination of pepper and gravy, her inveteratehabit of sending up bread poultices with pheasants, --all these sins andmany others are ruthlessly unmasked by the author. Ruthlessly andrightly. For the British cook is a foolish woman who should be turnedfor her iniquities into a pillar of salt which she never knows how touse. 

But our author is not local merely. He has been in many lands; he haseaten back-hendl at Vienna and kulibatsch at St. Petersburg; he has hadthe courage to face the buffalo veal of Roumania and to dine with aGerman family at one o'clock; he has serious views on the right method ofcooking those famous white truffles of Turin of which Alexandre Dumas wasso fond; and, in the face of the Oriental Club, declares that Bombaycurry is better than the curry of Bengal. In fact he seems to have hadexperience of almost every kind of meal except the 'square meal' of theAmericans. This he should study at once; there is a great field for thephilosophic epicure in the United States. Boston beans may be dismissedat once as delusions, but soft-shell crabs, terrapin, canvas-back ducks, blue fish and the pompono of New Orleans are all wonderful delicacies, particularly when one gets them at Delmonico's. Indeed, the two mostremarkable bits of scenery in the States are undoubtedly Delmonico's andthe Yosemite Valley; and the former place has done more to promote a goodfeeling between England and America than anything else has in thiscentury. 

We hope the 'Wanderer' will go there soon and add a chapter to Dinnersand Dishes, and that his book will have in England the influence itdeserves. There are twenty ways of cooking a potato and three hundredand sixty-five ways of cooking an egg, yet the British cook, up to thepresent moment, knows only three methods of sending up either one or theother. 

Dinners and Dishes. By 'Wanderer. ' (Simpkin and Marshall. )

A MODERN EPIC

(Pall Mall Gazette, March 13, 1885. )

In an age of hurry like ours the appearance of an epic poem more thanfive thousand lines in length cannot but be regarded as remarkable. Whether such a form of art is the one most suited to our century is aquestion. Edgar Allan Poe insisted that no poem should take more than anhour to read, the essence of a work of art being its unity of impressionand of effect. Still, it would be difficult to accept absolutely a canonof art which would place the Divine Comedy on the shelf and deprive us ofthe Bothwell of Mr. Swinburne. A work of art is to be estimated by itsbeauty not by its size, and in Mr. Wills's Melchior there is beauty of arich and lofty character. 

Remembering the various arts which have yielded up their secrets to Mr. Wills, it is interesting to note in his poems, here the picturesquevision of the painter, here the psychology of the novelist, and here theplaywright's sense of dramatic situation. Yet these things, which arethe elements of his work of art though we arbitrarily separate them incriticism, are in the work itself blended and made one by the trueimaginative and informing power. For Melchior is not a piece of poeticwriting merely; it is that very rare thing, a poem. 

It is dedicated to Mr. Robert Browning, not inappropriately, as it dealswith that problem of the possible expression of life through music, thevalue of which as a motive in poetry Mr. Browning was the first to see. The story is this. In one of the little Gothic towns of Northern Germanylives Melchior, a dreamer and a musician. One night he rescues by chancea girl from drowning and lodges her in a convent of holy women. He growsto love her and to see in her the incarnation of that St. Cecily whom, with mystic and almost mediaeval passion, he had before adored. But apriest separates them, and Melchior goes mad. An old doctor, who makes astudy of insanity, determines to try and cure him, and induces the girlto appear to him, disguised as St. Cecily herself, while he sits broodingat the organ. Thinking her at first to be indeed the Saint he hadworshipped, Melchior falls in ecstasy at her feet, but soon discoveringthe trick kills her in a sudden paroxysm of madness. The horror of theact restores his reason; but, with the return of sanity, the dreams andvisions of the artist's nature begin to vanish; the musician sees theworld not through a glass but face to face, and he dies just as the worldis awakening to his music. 

The character of Melchior, who inherits his music from his father, andfrom his mother his mysticism, is extremely fascinating as apsychological study. Mr. Wills has made a most artistic use of thatscientific law of heredity which has already strongly influenced theliterature of this century, and to which we owe Dr. Holmes's fantasticElsie Venner, Daniel Deronda--that dullest of masterpieces--and thedreadful Rougon-Macquart family with whose misdeeds M. Zola is neverweary of troubling us. 

Blanca, the girl, is a somewhat slight sketch, but then, like Ophelia, she is merely the occasion of a tragedy and not its heroine. The rest ofthe characters are most powerfully drawn and create themselves simply andswiftly before us as the story proceeds, the method of the practiseddramatist being here of great value. 

As regards the style, we notice some accidental assonances of rhyme whichin an unrhymed poem are never pleasing; and the unfinished short line offive or six syllables, however legitimate on the stage where the actorhimself can make the requisite musical pause, is not a beauty in a blankverse poem, and is employed by Mr. Wills far too frequently. Still, taken as a whole, the style has the distinction of noble melody. 

There are many passages which, did space permit us, we would like toquote, but we must content ourselves with saying that in Melchior we findnot merely pretty gems of rich imagery and delicate fancy, but a fineimaginative treatment of many of the most important modern problems, notably of the relation of life to art. It is a pleasure to herald apoem which combines so many elements of strength and beauty. 

Melchior. By W. G. Wills, author of Charles I. , Olivia, etc. , and writerof Claudian. (Macmillan and Co. )

SHAKESPEARE ON SCENERY

(Dramatic Review, March 14, 1885. )

I have often heard people wonder what Shakespeare would say, could he seeMr. Irving's production of his Much Ado About Nothing, or Mr. WilsonBarrett's setting of his Hamlet. Would he take pleasure in the glory ofthe scenery and the marvel of the colour? Would he be interested in theCathedral of Messina, and the battlements of Elsinore? Or would he beindifferent, and say the play, and the play only, is the thing?

Speculations like these are always pleasurable, and in the present casehappen to be profitable also. For it is not difficult to see whatShakespeare's attitude would be; not difficult, that is to say, if onereads Shakespeare himself, instead of reading merely what is writtenabout him. 

Speaking, for instance, directly, as the manager of a London theatre, through the lips of the chorus in Henry V. , he complains of the smallnessof the stage on which he has to produce the pageant of a big historicalplay, and of the want of scenery which obliges him to cut out many of itsmost picturesque incidents, apologises for the scanty number of superswho had to play the soldiers, and for the shabbiness of the properties, and, finally, expresses his regret at being unable to bring on realhorses. 

In the Midsummer Night's Dream, again, he gives us a most amusing pictureof the straits to which theatrical managers of his day were reduced bythe want of proper scenery. In fact, it is impossible to read himwithout seeing that he is constantly protesting against the two speciallimitations of the Elizabethan stage--the lack of suitable scenery, andthe fashion of men playing women's parts, just as he protests againstother difficulties with which managers of theatres have still to contend, such as actors who do not understand their words; actors who miss theircues; actors who overact their parts; actors who mouth; actors who gag;actors who play to the gallery, and amateur actors. 

And, indeed, a great dramatist, as he was, could not but have felt verymuch hampered at being obliged continually to interrupt the progress of aplay in order to send on some one to explain to the audience that thescene was to be changed to a particular place on the entrance of aparticular character, and after his exit to somewhere else; that thestage was to represent the deck of a ship in a storm, or the interior ofa Greek temple, or the streets of a certain town, to all of whichinartistic devices Shakespeare is reduced, and for which he always amplyapologises. Besides this clumsy method, Shakespeare had two othersubstitutes for scenery--the hanging out of a placard, and hisdescriptions. The first of these could hardly have satisfied his passionfor picturesqueness and his feeling for beauty, and certainly did notsatisfy the dramatic critic of his day. But as regards the description, to those of us who look on Shakespeare not merely as a playwright but asa poet, and who enjoy reading him at home just as much as we enjoy seeinghim acted, it may be a matter of congratulation that he had not at hiscommand such skilled machinists as are in use now at the Princess's andat the Lyceum. For had Cleopatra's barge, for instance, been a structureof canvas and Dutch metal, it would probably have been painted over orbroken up after the withdrawal of the piece, and, even had it survived toour own day, would, I am afraid, have become extremely shabby by thistime. Whereas now the beaten gold of its poop is still bright, and thepurple of its sails still beautiful; its silver oars are not tired ofkeeping time to the music of the flutes they follow, nor the Nereid'sflower-soft hands of touching its silken tackle; the mermaid still liesat its helm, and still on its deck stand the boys with their colouredfans. Yet lovely as all Shakespeare's descriptive passages are, adescription is in its essence undramatic. Theatrical audiences are farmore impressed by what they look at than by what they listen to; and themodern dramatist, in having the surroundings of his play visiblypresented to the audience when the curtain rises, enjoys an advantage forwhich Shakespeare often expresses his desire. It is true thatShakespeare's descriptions are not what descriptions are in modernplays--accounts of what the audience can observe for themselves; they arethe imaginative method by which he creates in the mind of the spectatorsthe image of that which he desires them to see. Still, the quality ofthe drama is action. It is always dangerous to pause forpicturesqueness. And the introduction of self-explanatory sceneryenables the modern method to be far more direct, while the loveliness ofform and colour which it gives us, seems to me often to create anartistic temperament in the audience, and to produce that joy in beautyfor beauty's sake, without which the great masterpieces of art can neverbe understood, to which, and to which only, are they ever revealed. 

To talk of the passion of a play being hidden by the paint, and ofsentiment being killed by scenery, is mere emptiness and folly of words. A noble play, nobly mounted, gives us double artistic pleasure. The eyeas well as the ear is gratified, and the whole nature is made exquisitelyreceptive of the influence of imaginative work. And as regards a badplay, have we not all seen large audiences lured by the loveliness ofscenic effect into listening to rhetoric posing as poetry, and tovulgarity doing duty for realism? Whether this be good or evil for thepublic I will not here discuss, but it is evident that the playwright, atany rate, never suffers. 

Indeed, the artist who really has suffered through the modern mounting ofplays is not the dramatist at all, but the scene-painter proper. He israpidly being displaced by the stage-carpenter. Now and then, at DruryLane, I have seen beautiful old front cloths let down, as perfect aspictures some of them, and pure painter's work, and there are many whichwe all remember at other theatres, in front of which some dialogue wasreduced to graceful dumb-show through the hammer and tin-tacks behind. But as a rule the stage is overcrowded with enormous properties, whichare not merely far more expensive and cumbersome than scene-paintings, but far less beautiful, and far less true. Properties kill perspective. A painted door is more like a real door than a real door is itself, forthe proper conditions of light and shade can be given to it; and theexcessive use of built up structures always makes the stage too glaring, for as they have to be lit from behind, as well as from the front, thegas-jets become the absolute light of the scene instead of the meansmerely by which we perceive the conditions of light and shadow which thepainter has desired to show us. 

So, instead of bemoaning the position of the playwright, it were betterfor the critics to exert whatever influence they may possess towardsrestoring the scene-painter to his proper position as an artist, and notallowing him to be built over by the property man, or hammered to deathby the carpenter. I have never seen any reason myself why such artistsas Mr. Beverley, Mr. Walter Hann, and Mr. Telbin should not be entitledto become Academicians. They have certainly as good a claim as have manyof those R. A. 's whose total inability to paint we can see every May for ashilling. 

And lastly, let those critics who hold up for our admiration thesimplicity of the Elizabethan Stage, remember that they are lauding acondition of things against which Shakespeare himself, in the spirit of atrue artist, always strongly protested. 

A BEVY OF POETS

(Pall Mall Gazette, March 27, 1885. )

This spring the little singers are out before the little sparrows andhave already begun chirruping. Here are four volumes already, and whoknows how many more will be given to us before the laburnums blossom? Thebest-bound volume must, of course, have precedence. It is called Echoesof Memory, by Atherton Furlong, and is cased in creamy vellum and tiedwith ribbons of yellow silk. Mr. Furlong's charm is the unsulliedsweetness of his simplicity. Indeed, we can strongly recommend to theSchool-Board the Lines on the Old Town Pump as eminently suitable forrecitation by children. Such a verse, for instance, as:

 I hear the little children say (For the tale will never die) How the old pump flowed both night and day When the brooks and the wells ran dry, has all the ring of Macaulay in it, and is a form of poetry which cannotpossibly harm anybody, even if translated into French. Any inaccurateideas of the laws of nature which the children might get from the passagein question could easily be corrected afterwards by a lecture onHydrostatics. The poem, however, which gives us most pleasure is the onecalled The Dear Old Knocker on the Door. It is appropriately illustratedby Mr. Tristram Ellis. We quote the concluding verses of the first andlast stanzas:

 Blithe voices then so dear Send up their shouts once more, Then sounds again on mem'ry's ear The dear old knocker on the door. . . . . . When mem'ry turns the key Where time has placed my score, Encased 'mid treasured thoughts must be The dear old knocker on the door. 

The cynic may mock at the subject of these verses, but we do not. Whynot an ode on a knocker? Does not Victor Hugo's tragedy of LucreceBorgia turn on the defacement of a doorplate? Mr. Furlong must not bediscouraged. Perhaps he will write poetry some day. If he does we wouldearnestly appeal to him to give up calling a cock 'proud chanticleer. 'Few synonyms are so depressing. 

Having been lured by the Circe of a white vellum binding into the regionof the pump and doormat, we turn to a modest little volume by Mr. Bowlingof St. John's College, Cambridge, entitled Sagittulae. And they areindeed delicate little arrows, for they are winged with the lightness ofthe lyric and barbed daintily with satire. AEsthesis and Athletes is asweet idyll, and nothing can be more pathetic than the Tragedy of theXIX. Century, which tells of a luckless examiner condemned in his publiccapacity to pluck for her Little-go the girl graduate whom he privatelyadores. Girton seems to be having an important influence on theCambridge school of poetry. We are not surprised. The Graces are theGraces always, even when they wear spectacles. 

Then comes Tuberose and Meadowsweet, by Mr. Mark Andre Raffalovich. Thisis really a remarkable little volume, and contains many strange andbeautiful poems. To say of these poems that they are unhealthy and bringwith them the heavy odours of the hothouse is to point out neither theirdefect nor their merit, but their quality merely. And though Mr. Raffalovich is not a wonderful poet, still he is a subtle artist inpoetry. Indeed, in his way he is a boyish master of curious music and offantastic rhyme, and can strike on the lute of language so many lovelychords that it seems a pity he does not know how to pronounce the titleof his book and the theme of his songs. For he insists on making'tuberose' a trisyllable always, as if it were a potato blossom and not aflower shaped like a tiny trumpet of ivory. However, for the sake of hismeadowsweet and his spring-green binding this must be forgiven him. Andthough he cannot pronounce 'tuberose' aright, at least he can sing of itexquisitely. 

Finally we come to Sturm und Drang, the work of an anonymous writer. Opening the volume at hazard we come across these graceful lines:

 How sweet to spend in this blue bay The close of life's disastrous day, To watch the morn break faintly free Across the greyness of the sea, What time Memnonian music fills The shadows of the dewy hills. 

Well, here is the touch of a poet, and we pluck up heart and read on. Thebook is a curious but not inartistic combination of the mental attitudeof Mr. Matthew Arnold with the style of Lord Tennyson. Sometimes, as inThe Sicilian Hermit, we get merely the metre of Locksley Hall without itsmusic, merely its fine madness and not its fine magic. Still, elsewherethere is good work, and Caliban in East London has a great deal of powerin it, though we do not like the adjective 'knockery' even in a poem onWhitechapel. 

On the whole, to those who watch the culture of the age, the mostinteresting thing in young poets is not so much what they invent as whatmasters they follow. A few years ago it was all Mr. Swinburne. That erahas happily passed away. The mimicry of passion is the most intolerableof all poses. Now, it is all Lord Tennyson, and that is better. For ayoung writer can gain more from the study of a literary poet than fromthe study of a lyrist. He may become the pupil of the one, but he cannever be anything but the slave of the other. And so we are glad to seein this volume direct and noble praise of him

* * * * *

 Who plucked in English meadows flowers fair As any that in unforgotten stave Vied with the orient gold of Venus' hair Or fringed the murmur of the AEgean wave, which are the fine words in which this anonymous poet pays his tribute tothe Laureate. 

(1) Echoes of Memory. By Atherton Furlong. (Field and Tuer. )

(2) Sagittulae. By E. W. Bowling. (Longmans, Green and Co. )

(3) Tuberose and Meadowsweet. By Mark Andre Raffalovich. (David Bogue. )

(4) Sturm und Drang. (Elliot Stock. )

In reply to the review A Bevy of Poets the following letter was publishedin the Pall Mall Gazette on March 30, 1885, under the title of

THE ROOT OF THE MATTER

SIR, --I am sorry not to be able to accept the graceful etymology of yourreviewer who calls me to task for not knowing how to pronounce the titleof my book Tuberose and Meadowsweet. I insist, he fancifully says, 'onmaking "tuberose" a trisyllable always, as if it were a potato blossomand not a flower shaped like a tiny trumpet of ivory. ' Alas! tuberose isa trisyllable if properly derived from the Latin tuberosus, the lumpyflower, having nothing to do with roses or with trumpets of ivory in nameany more than in nature. I am reminded by a great living poet thatanother correctly wrote:

 Or as the moonlight fills the open sky Struggling with darkness--as a tuberose Peoples some Indian dell with scents which lie

 Like clouds above the flower from which they rose. 

In justice to Shelley, whose lines I quote, your readers will admit thatI have good authority for making a trisyllable of tuberose. --I am, Sir, your obedient servant, ANDRE RAFFALOVICH. March 28. 

PARNASSUS VERSUS PHILOLOGY

(Pall Mall Gazette, April 1, 1885. )

To the Editor of the Pall Mall Gazette. 

SIR, --I am deeply distressed to hear that tuberose is so called from itsbeing a 'lumpy flower. ' It is not at all lumpy, and, even if it were, nopoet should be heartless enough to say so. Henceforth, there really mustbe two derivations for every word, one for the poet and one for thescientist. And in the present case the poet will dwell on the tinytrumpets of ivory into which the white flower breaks, and leave to theman of science horrid allusions to its supposed lumpiness and indiscreetrevelations of its private life below ground. In fact, 'tuber' as aderivation is disgraceful. On the roots of verbs Philology may beallowed to speak, but on the roots of flowers she must keep silence. Wecannot allow her to dig up Parnassus. And, as regards the word being atrisyllable, I am reminded by a great living poet that another correctlywrote:

 And the jessamine faint, and the sweet tuberose, The sweetest flower for scent that blows; And all rare blossoms from every clime Grew in that garden in perfect prime. 

In justice to Shelley, whose lines I quote, your readers will admit thatI have good authority for making a dissyllable of tuberose. --I am, Sir, your obedient servant, THE CRITIC, WHO HAD TO READ FOUR VOLUMES OF MODERN POETRY. March 30. 

HAMLET AT THE LYCEUM

(Dramatic Review, May 9, 1885. )

It sometimes happens that at a premiere in London the least enjoyablepart of the performance is the play. I have seen many audiences moreinteresting than the actors, and have often heard better dialogue in thefoyer than I have on the stage. At the Lyceum, however, this is rarelythe case, and when the play is a play of Shakespeare's, and among itsexponents are Mr. Irving and Miss Ellen Terry, we turn from the gods inthe gallery and from the goddesses in the stalls, to enjoy the charm ofthe production, and to take delight in the art. The lions are behind thefootlights and not in front of them when we have a noble tragedy noblyacted. And I have rarely witnessed such enthusiasm as that which greetedon last Saturday night the two artists I have mentioned. I would like, in fact, to use the word ovation, but a pedantic professor has recentlyinformed us, with the Batavian buoyancy of misapplied learning, that thisexpression is not to be employed except when a sheep has been sacrificed. At the Lyceum last week I need hardly say nothing so dreadful occurred. The only inartistic incident of the evening was the hurling of a bouquetfrom a box at Mr. Irving while he was engaged in pourtraying the agony ofHamlet's death, and the pathos of his parting with Horatio. The DramaticCollege might take up the education of spectators as well as that ofplayers, and teach people that there is a proper moment for the throwingof flowers as well as a proper method. 

As regards Mr. Irving's own performance, it has been already soelaborately criticised and described, from his business with the supposedpictures in the closet scene down to his use of 'peacock' for 'paddock, 'that little remains to be said; nor, indeed, does a Lyceum audiencerequire the interposition of the dramatic critic in order to understandor to appreciate the Hamlet of this great actor. I call him a greatactor because he brings to the interpretation of a work of art the twoqualities which we in this century so much desire, the qualities ofpersonality and of perfection. A few years ago it seemed to many, andperhaps rightly, that the personality overshadowed the art. No suchcriticism would be fair now. The somewhat harsh angularity of movementand faulty pronunciation have been replaced by exquisite grace of gestureand clear precision of word, where such precision is necessary. Fordelightful as good elocution is, few things are so depressing as to heara passionate passage recited instead of being acted. The quality of afine performance is its life more than its learning, and every word in aplay has a musical as well as an intellectual value, and must be madeexpressive of a certain emotion. So it does not seem to me that in allparts of a play perfect pronunciation is necessarily dramatic. When thewords are 'wild and whirling, ' the expression of them must be wild andwhirling also. Mr. Irving, I think, manages his voice with singular art;it was impossible to discern a false note or wrong intonation in hisdialogue or his soliloquies, and his strong dramatic power, his realisticpower as an actor, is as effective as ever. A great critic at thebeginning of this century said that Hamlet is the most difficult part topersonate on the stage, that it is like the attempt to 'embody a shadow. 'I cannot say that I agree with this idea. Hamlet seems to me essentiallya good acting part, and in Mr. Irving's performance of it there is thatcombination of poetic grace with absolute reality which is so eternallydelightful. Indeed, if the words easy and difficult have any meaning atall in matters of art, I would be inclined to say that Ophelia is themore difficult part. She has, I mean, less material by which to produceher effects. She is the occasion of the tragedy, but she is neither itsheroine nor its chief victim. She is swept away by circumstances, andgives the opportunity for situation, of which she is not herself theclimax, and which she does not herself command. And of all the partswhich Miss Terry has acted in her brilliant career, there is none inwhich her infinite powers of pathos and her imaginative and creativefaculty are more shown than in her Ophelia. Miss Terry is one of thoserare artists who needs for her dramatic effect no elaborate dialogue, andfor whom the simplest words are sufficient. 'I love you not, ' saysHamlet, and all that Ophelia answers is, 'I was the more deceived. ' Theseare not very grand words to read, but as Miss Terry gave them in actingthey seemed to be the highest possible expression of Ophelia's character. Beautiful, too, was the quick remorse she conveyed by her face andgesture the moment she had lied to Hamlet and told him her father was athome. This I thought a masterpiece of good acting, and her mad scene waswonderful beyond all description. The secrets of Melpomene are known toMiss Terry as well as the secrets of Thalia. As regards the rest of thecompany there is always a high standard at the Lyceum, but someparticular mention should be made of Mr. Alexander's brilliantperformance of Laertes. Mr. Alexander has a most effective presence, acharming voice, and a capacity for wearing lovely costumes with ease andelegance. Indeed, in the latter respect his only rival was Mr. NormanForbes, who played either Guildenstern or Rosencrantz very gracefully. Ibelieve one of our budding Hazlitts is preparing a volume to be entitled'Great Guildensterns and Remarkable Rosencrantzes, ' but I have never beenable myself to discern any difference between these two characters. Theyare, I think, the only characters Shakespeare has not cared toindividualise. Whichever of the two, however, Mr. Forbes acted, he actedit well. Only one point in Mr. Alexander's performance seemed to me opento question, that was his kneeling during the whole of Polonius's speech. For this I see no necessity at all, and it makes the scene look lessnatural than it should--gives it, I mean, too formal an air. However, the performance was most spirited and gave great pleasure to every one. Mr. Alexander is an artist from whom much will be expected, and I have nodoubt he will give us much that is fine and noble. He seems to have allthe qualifications for a good actor. 

There is just one other character I should like to notice. The FirstPlayer seemed to me to act far too well. He should act very badly. TheFirst Player, besides his position in the dramatic evolution of thetragedy, is Shakespeare's caricature of the ranting actor of his day, just as the passage he recites is Shakespeare's own parody on the dullplays of some of his rivals. The whole point of Hamlet's advice to theplayers seems to me to be lost unless the Player himself has been guiltyof the fault which Hamlet reprehends, unless he has sawn the air with hishand, mouthed his lines, torn his passion to tatters, and out-HerodedHerod. The very sensibility which Hamlet notices in the actor, such ashis real tears and the like, is not the quality of a good artist. Thepart should be played after the manner of a provincial tragedian. It ismeant to be a satire, and to play it well is to play it badly. Thescenery and costumes were excellent with the exception of the King'sdress, which was coarse in colour and tawdry in effect. And the PlayerQueen should have come in boy's attire to Elsinore. 

However, last Saturday night was not a night for criticism. The theatrewas filled with those who desired to welcome Mr. Irving back to his owntheatre, and we were all delighted at his re-appearance among us. I hopethat some time will elapse before he and Miss Terry cross again thatdisappointing Atlantic Ocean. 

TWO NEW NOVELS

(Pall Mall Gazette, May 15, 1885. )

The clever authoress of In the Golden Days has chosen for the scene ofher story the England of two centuries ago, as a relief, she tells us inher preface, 'from perpetual nineteenth-centuryism. ' Upon the otherhand, she makes a pathetic appeal to her readers not to regard her bookas an 'historical novel, ' on the ground that such a title strikes terrorinto the public. This seems to us rather a curious position to take up. Esmond and Notre Dame are historical novels, both of them, and both ofthem popular successes. John Inglesant and Romola have gone through manyeditions, and even Salammbo has its enthusiasts. We think that thepublic is very fond of historical novels, and as for perpetual'nineteenth-centuryism'--a vile phrase, by the way--we only wish thatmore of our English novelists studied our age and its society than do soat present. However, In the Golden Days must not be judged by itsfoolish preface. It is really a very charming book, and though Dryden, Betterton, and Wills's Coffee-House are dragged in rather a propos debottes, still the picture of the time is well painted. Joyce, the littlePuritan maiden, is an exquisite creation, and Hugo Wharncliffe, herlover, makes a fine hero. The sketch of Algernon Sidney is rathercolourless, but Charles II. Is well drawn. It seems to be a novel with ahigh purpose and a noble meaning. Yet it is never dull. 

Mrs. Macquoid's Louisa is modern and the scene is in Italy. Italy, wefear, has been a good deal overdone in fiction. A little more Piccadillyand a little less Perugia would be a relief. However, the story isinteresting. A young English girl marries an Italian nobleman and, aftersome time, being bored with picturesqueness, falls in love with anEnglishman. The story is told with a great deal of power and endsproperly and pleasantly. It can safely be recommended to young persons. 

(1) In the Golden Days. By Edna Lyall, Author of We Two, Donovan, etc. (Hurst and Blackett. )

(2) Louisa. By Katherine S. Macquoid. (Bentley and Son. )

HENRY THE FOURTH AT OXFORD

(Dramatic Review, May 23, 1885. )

I have been told that the ambition of every Dramatic Club is to act HenryIV. I am not surprised. The spirit of comedy is as fervent in this playas is the spirit of chivalry; it is an heroic pageant as well as anheroic poem, and like most of Shakespeare's historical dramas it containsan extraordinary number of thoroughly good acting parts, each of which isabsolutely individual in character, and each of which contributes to theevolution of the plot. 

Rumour, from time to time, has brought in tidings of a proposedproduction by the banks of the Cam, but it seems at the last moment Boxand Cox has always had to be substituted in the bill. 

To Oxford belongs the honour of having been the first to present on thestage this noble play, and the production which I saw last week was inevery way worthy of that lovely town, that mother of sweetness and oflight. For, in spite of the roaring of the young lions at the Union, andthe screaming of the rabbits in the home of the vivisector, in spite ofKeble College, and the tramways, and the sporting prints, Oxford stillremains the most beautiful thing in England, and nowhere else are lifeand art so exquisitely blended, so perfectly made one. Indeed, in mostother towns art has often to present herself in the form of a reactionagainst the sordid ugliness of ignoble lives, but at Oxford she comes tous as an exquisite flower born of the beauty of life and expressive oflife's joy. She finds her home by the Isis as once she did by theIlissus; the Magdalen walks and the Magdalen cloisters are as dear to heras were ever the silver olives of Colonus and the golden gateway of thehouse of Pallas: she covers with fanlike tracery the vaulted entrance toChrist Church Hall, and looks out from the windows of Merton; her feethave stirred the Cumnor cowslips, and she gathers fritillaries in theriver-fields. To her the clamour of the schools and the dulness of thelecture-room are a weariness and a vexation of spirit; she seeks not todefine virtue, and cares little for the categories; she smiles on theswift athlete whose plastic grace has pleased her, and rejoices in theyoung Barbarians at their games; she watches the rowers from the reedybank and gives myrtle to her lovers, and laurel to her poets, and rue tothose who talk wisely in the street; she makes the earth lovely to allwho dream with Keats; she opens high heaven to all who soar with Shelley;and turning away her head from pedant, proctor and Philistine, she haswelcomed to her shrine a band of youthful actors, knowing that they havesought with much ardour for the stern secret of Melpomene, and caughtwith much gladness the sweet laughter of Thalia. And to me this ardourand this gladness were the two most fascinating qualities of the Oxfordperformance, as indeed they are qualities which are necessary to any finedramatic production. For without quick and imaginative observation oflife the most beautiful play becomes dull in presentation, and what isnot conceived in delight by the actor can give no delight at all toothers. 

I know that there are many who consider that Shakespeare is more for thestudy than for the stage. With this view I do not for a moment agree. Shakespeare wrote the plays to be acted, and we have no right to alterthe form which he himself selected for the full expression of his work. Indeed, many of the beauties of that work can be adequately conveyed tous only through the actor's art. As I sat in the Town Hall of Oxford theother night, the majesty of the mighty lines of the play seemed to me togain new music from the clear young voices that uttered them, and theideal grandeur of the heroism to be made more real to the spectators bythe chivalrous bearing, the noble gesture and the fine passion of itsexponents. Even the dresses had their dramatic value. Theirarchaeological accuracy gave us, immediately on the rise of the curtain, a perfect picture of the time. As the knights and nobles moved acrossthe stage in the flowing robes of peace and in the burnished steel ofbattle, we needed no dreary chorus to tell us in what age or land theplay's action was passing, for the fifteenth century in all the dignityand grace of its apparel was living actually before us, and the delicateharmonies of colour struck from the first a dominant note of beauty whichadded to the intellectual realism of archaeology the sensuous charm ofart. 

As for individual actors, Mr. Mackinnon's Prince Hal was a most gay andgraceful performance, lit here and there with charming touches ofprincely dignity and of noble feeling. Mr. Coleridge's Falstaff was fullof delightful humour, though perhaps at times he did not take ussufficiently into his confidence. An audience looks at a tragedian, buta comedian looks at his audience. However, he gave much pleasure toevery one, and Mr. Bourchier's Hotspur was really most remarkable. Mr. Bourchier has a fine stage presence, a beautiful voice, and produces hiseffects by a method as dramatically impressive as it is artisticallyright. Once or twice he seemed to me to spoil his last line by walkingthrough it. The part of Harry Percy is one full of climaxes which mustnot be let slip. But still there was always a freedom and spirit in hisstyle which was very pleasing, and his delivery of the colloquialpassages I thought excellent, notably of that in the first act:

 What d' ye call the place? A plague upon't--it is in Gloucestershire; 'Twas where the madcap duke his uncle kept, His uncle York;

lines by the way in which Kemble made a great effect. Mr. Bourchier hasthe opportunity of a fine career on the English stage, and I hope he willtake advantage of it. Among the minor parts in the play Glendower, Mortimer and Sir Richard Vernon were capitally acted, Worcester was aperformance of some subtlety, Mrs. Woods was a charming Lady Percy, andLady Edward Spencer Churchill, as Mortimer's wife, made us all believethat we understood Welsh. Her dialogue and her song were most pleasingbits of artistic realism which fully accounted for the Celtic chair atOxford. 

But though I have mentioned particular actors, the real value of thewhole representation was to be found in its absolute unity, in itsdelicate sense of proportion, and in that breadth of effect which is tobe got only by the most careful elaboration of detail. I have rarelyseen a production better stage-managed. Indeed, I hope that theUniversity will take some official notice of this delightful work of art. Why should not degrees be granted for good acting? Are they not given tothose who misunderstand Plato and who mistranslate Aristotle? And shouldthe artist be passed over? No. To Prince Hal, Hotspur and Falstaff, D. C. L. 's should be gracefully offered. I feel sure they would begracefully accepted. To the rest of the company the crimson or the sheep-skin hood might be assigned honoris causa to the eternal confusion of thePhilistine, and the rage of the industrious and the dull. Thus wouldOxford confer honour on herself, and the artist be placed in his properposition. However, whether or not Convocation recognises the claims ofculture, I hope that the Oxford Dramatic Society will produce everysummer for us some noble play like Henry IV. For, in plays of this kind, plays which deal with bygone times, there is always this peculiar charm, that they combine in one exquisite presentation the passions that areliving with the picturesqueness that is dead. And when we have themodern spirit given to us in an antique form, the very remoteness of thatform can be made a method of increased realism. This was Shakespeare'sown attitude towards the ancient world, this is the attitude we in thiscentury should adopt towards his plays, and with a feeling akin to thisit seemed to me that these brilliant young Oxonians were working. If itwas so, their aim is the right one. For while we look to the dramatistto give romance to realism, we ask of the actor to give realism toromance. 

MODERN GREEK POETRY

(Pall Mall Gazette, May 27, 1885. )

Odysseus, not Achilles, is the type of the modern Greek. Merchandise hastaken precedence of the Muses and politics are preferred to Parnassus. Yet by the Illissus there are sweet singers; the nightingales are notsilent in Colonus; and from the garden of Greek nineteenth-century poetryMiss Edmonds has made a very pleasing anthology; and in pouring the winefrom the golden into the silver cup she has still kept much of the beautyof the original. Even when translated into English, modern Greek lyricsare preferable to modern Greek loans. 

As regards the quality of this poetry, if the old Greek spirit can betraced at all, it is the spirit of Tyrtaeus and of Theocritus. Thewarlike ballads of Rhigas and Aristotle Valaorites have a fine ring ofmusic and of passion in them, and the folk-songs of George Drosines arefull of charming pictures of rustic life and delicate idylls ofshepherds' courtships. These we acknowledge that we prefer. The flutesof the sheepfold are more delightful than the clarions of battle. Still, poetry played such a noble part in the Greek War of Independence that itis impossible not to look with reverence on the spirited war-songs thatmeant so much to those who were righting for liberty and mean so mucheven now to their children. 

Other poets besides Drosines have taken the legends that linger among thepeasants and given to them an artistic form. The song of The Seasons isfull of beauty, and there is a delightful poem on The Building of St. Sophia, which tells how the design of that noble building was suggestedby the golden honeycomb of a bee which had flown from the king's palacewith a crumb of blessed bread that had fallen from the king's hands. Thestory is still to be found in Thrace. 

One of the ballads, also, has a good deal of spirit. It is by KostesPalamas and was suggested by an interesting incident which occurred someyears ago in Athens. In the summer of 1881 there was borne through thestreets the remains of an aged woman in the complete costume of aPallikar, which dress she had worn at the siege of Missolonghi and in ithad requested to be buried. The life of this real Greek heroine shouldbe studied by those who are investigating the question of whereinwomanliness consists. The view the poet takes of her is, we need hardlysay, very different from that which Canon Liddon would entertain. Yet itis none the less fine on this account, and we are glad that this old ladyhas been given a place in art. The volume is, on the whole, delightfulreading, and though not much can be said for lines like these:

 There _cometh_ from the West The timid starry _bands_, still, the translations are in many instances most felicitous and theirstyle most pleasing. 

Greek Lays, Idylls, Legends, etc. Translated by E. M. Edmonds. (Trubnerand Co. )

OLIVIA AT THE LYCEUM

(Dramatic Review, May 30, 1885. )

Whether or not it is an advantage for a novel to be produced in adramatic form is, I think, open to question. The psychological analysisof such work as that of Mr. George Meredith, for instance, would probablylose by being transmuted into the passionate action of the stage, nordoes M. Zola's formule scientifique gain anything at all by theatricalpresentation. With Goldsmith it is somewhat different. In The Vicar ofWakefield he seeks simply to please his readers, and desires not to provea theory; he looks on life rather as a picture to be painted than as aproblem to be solved; his aim is to create men and women more than tovivisect them; his dialogue is essentially dramatic, and his novel seemsto pass naturally into the dramatic form. And to me there is somethingvery pleasurable in seeing and studying the same subject under differentconditions of art. For life remains eternally unchanged; it is artwhich, by presenting it to us under various forms, enables us to realiseits many-sided mysteries, and to catch the quality of its mostfiery-coloured moments. The originality, I mean, which we ask from theartist, is originality of treatment, not of subject. It is only theunimaginative who ever invents. The true artist is known by the use hemakes of what he annexes, and he annexes everything. 

Looking in this light at Mr. Wills's Olivia, it seems to me a veryexquisite work of art. Indeed, I know no other dramatist who could havere-told this beautiful English tale with such tenderness and such power, neither losing the charm of the old story nor forgetting the conditionsof the new form. The sentiment of the poet and the science of theplaywright are exquisitely balanced in it. For though in prose it is apoem, and while a poem it is also a play. 

But fortunate as Mr. Wills has been in the selection of his subject andin his treatment of it, he is no less fortunate in the actors whointerpret his work. To whatever character Miss Terry plays she bringsthe infinite charm of her beauty, and the marvellous grace of hermovements and gestures. It is impossible to escape from the sweettyranny of her personality. She dominates her audience by the secret ofCleopatra. In her Olivia, however, it is not merely her personality thatfascinates us but her power also, her power over pathos, and her commandof situation. The scene in which she bade goodbye to her family wastouching beyond any scene I remember in any modern play, yet no harsh orviolent note was sounded; and when in the succeeding act she struck, innatural and noble indignation, the libertine who had betrayed her, therewas, I think, no one in the theatre who did not recognise that in MissTerry our stage possesses a really great artist, who can thrill anaudience without harrowing it, and by means that seem simple and easy canproduce the finest dramatic effect. Mr. Irving, as Dr. Primrose, intensified the beautiful and blind idolatry of the old pastor for hisdaughter till his own tragedy seems almost greater than hers; the scenein the third act, where he breaks down in his attempt to reprove the lambthat has strayed from the fold, was a masterpiece of fine acting; and thewhole performance, while carefully elaborate in detail, was full ofbreadth and dignity. I acknowledge that I liked him least at the closeof the second act. It seems to me that here we should be made to feelnot merely the passionate rage of the father, but the powerlessness ofthe old man. The taking down of the pistols, and the attempt to followthe young duellist, are pathetic because they are useless, and I hardlythink that Mr. Irving conveyed this idea. As regards the rest of thecharacters, Mr. Terriss's Squire Thornhill was an admirable picture of afascinating young rake. Indeed, it was so fascinating that the moralequilibrium of the audience was quite disturbed, and nobody seemed tocare very much for the virtuous Mr. Burchell. I was not sorry to seethis triumph of the artistic over the ethical sympathy. Perfect heroesare the monsters of melodramas, and have no place in dramatic art. Lifepossibly contains them, but Parnassus often rejects what Peckham maywelcome. I look forward to a reaction in favour of the culturedcriminal. Mr. Norman Forbes was a very pleasing Moses, and gave hisLatin quotations charmingly, Miss Emery's Sophy was most winning, and, indeed, every part seemed to me well acted except that of the virtuousMr. Burchell. This fact, however, rather pleased me than otherwise, asit increased the charm of his attractive nephew. 

The scenery and costumes were excellent, as indeed they always are at theLyceum when the piece is produced under Mr. Irving's direction. Thefirst scene was really very beautiful, and quite as good as the famouscherry orchard of the Theatre Francais. A critic who posed as anauthority on field sports assured me that no one ever went out huntingwhen roses were in full bloom. Personally, that is exactly the season Iwould select for the chase, but then I know more about flowers than I doabout foxes, and like them much better. If the critic was right, eitherthe roses must wither or Squire Thornhill must change his coat. A moreserious objection may be brought against the division of the last actinto three scenes. There, I think, there was a distinct dramatic loss. The room to which Olivia returns should have been exactly the same roomshe had left. As a picture of the eighteenth century, however, the wholeproduction was admirable, and the details, both of acting and of mise-en-scene, wonderfully perfect. I wish Olivia would take off her prettymittens when her fortune is being told. Cheiromancy is a science whichdeals almost entirely with the lines on the palm of the hand, and mittenswould seriously interfere with its mysticism. Still, when all is said, how easily does this lovely play, this artistic presentation, survivecriticisms founded on cheiromancy and cub-hunting! The Lyceum under Mr. Irving's management has become a centre of art. We are all of us in hisdebt. I trust that we may see some more plays by living dramatistsproduced at his theatre, for Olivia has been exquisitely mounted andexquisitely played. 

AS YOU LIKE IT AT COOMBE HOUSE

(Dramatic Review, June 6, 1885. )

In Theophile Gautier's first novel, that golden book of spirit and sense, that holy writ of beauty, there is a most fascinating account of anamateur performance of As You Like It in the large orangery of a Frenchcountry house. Yet, lovely as Gautier's description is, the realpresentation of the play last week at Coombe seemed to me lovelier still, for not merely were there present in it all those elements of poetry andpicturesqueness which le maitre impeccable so desired, but to them wasadded also the exquisite charm of the open woodland and the delightfulfreedom of the open air. Nor indeed could the Pastoral Players have madea more fortunate selection of a play. A tragedy under the sameconditions would have been impossible. For tragedy is the exaggerationof the individual, and nature thinks nothing of dwarfing a hero by aholly bush, and reducing a heroine to a mere effect of colour. Thesubtleties also of facial expression are in the open air almost entirelylost; and while this would be a serious defect in the presentation of aplay which deals immediately with psychology, in the case of a comedy, where the situations predominate over the characters, we do not feel itnearly so much; and Shakespeare himself seems to have clearly recognisedthis difference, for while he had Hamlet and Macbeth always played byartificial light he acted As You Like It and the rest of his comedies enplein jour. 

The condition then under which this comedy was produced by Lady ArchibaldCampbell and Mr. Godwin did not place any great limitations on theactor's art, and increased tenfold the value of the play as a picture. Through an alley of white hawthorn and gold laburnum we passed into thegreen pavilion that served as the theatre, the air sweet with odour ofthe lilac and with the blackbird's song; and when the curtain fell intoits trench of flowers, and the play commenced, we saw before us a realforest, and we knew it to be Arden. For with whoop and shout, up throughthe rustling fern came the foresters trooping, the banished Duke took hisseat beneath the tall elm, and as his lords lay around him on the grass, the rich melody of Shakespeare's blank verse began to reach our ears. Andall through the performance this delightful sense of joyous woodland lifewas sustained, and even when the scene was left empty for the shepherd todrive his flock across the sward, or for Rosalind to school Orlando inlove-making, far away we could hear the shrill halloo of the hunter, andcatch now and then the faint music of some distant horn. One distinctdramatic advantage was gained by the mise en scene. 

The abrupt exits and entrances, which are necessitated on the real stageby the inevitable limitations of space, were in many cases done awaywith, and we saw the characters coming gradually towards us through brakeand underwood, or passing away down the slope till they were lost in somedeep recess of the forest; the effect of distance thus gained beinglargely increased by the faint wreaths of blue mist that floated at timesacross the background. Indeed I never saw an illustration at once soperfect and so practical of the aesthetic value of smoke. 

As for the players themselves, the pleasing naturalness of their methodharmonised delightfully with their natural surroundings. Those of themwho were amateurs were too artistic to be stagey, and those who wereactors too experienced to be artificial. The humorous sadness of Jaques, that philosopher in search of sensation, found a perfect exponent in Mr. Hermann Vezin. Touchstone has been so often acted as a low comedy partthat Mr. Elliott's rendering of the swift sententious fool was a welcomechange, and a more graceful and winning Phebe than Mrs. Plowden, a moretender Celia than Miss Schletter, a more realistic Audrey than MissFulton, I have never seen. Rosalind suffered a good deal through theomission of the first act; we saw, I mean, more of the saucy boy than wedid of the noble girl; and though the persiflage always told, the poetrywas often lost; still Miss Calhoun gave much pleasure; and Lady ArchibaldCampbell's Orlando was a really remarkable performance. Too melancholysome seemed to think it. Yet is not Orlando lovesick? Too dreamy, Iheard it said. Yet Orlando is a poet. And even admitting that thevigour of the lad who tripped up the Duke's wrestler was hardlysufficiently emphasised, still in the low music of Lady ArchibaldCampbell's voice, and in the strange beauty of her movements andgestures, there was a wonderful fascination, and the visible presence ofromance quite consoled me for the possible absence of robustness. Amongthe other characters should be mentioned Mr. Claude Ponsonby's FirstLord, Mr. De Cordova's Corin (a bit of excellent acting), and the Silviusof Mr. Webster. 

As regards the costumes the colour scheme was very perfect. Brown andgreen were the dominant notes, and yellow was most artistically used. There were, however, two distinct discords. Touchstone's motley was fartoo glaring, and the crude white of Rosalind's bridal raiment in the lastact was absolutely displeasing. A contrast may be striking but shouldnever be harsh. And lovely in colour as Mrs. Plowden's dress was, a sortof panegyric on a pansy, I am afraid that in Shakespeare's Arden therewere no Chelsea China Shepherdesses, and I am sure that the romance ofPhebe does not need to be intensified by any reminiscences of porcelain. Still, As You Like It has probably never been so well mounted, norcostumes worn with more ease and simplicity. Not the least charming partof the whole production was the music, which was under the direction ofthe Rev. Arthur Batson. The boys' voices were quite exquisite, and Mr. Walsham sang with much spirit. 

On the whole the Pastoral Players are to be warmly congratulated on thesuccess of their representation, and to the artistic sympathies of LadyArchibald Campbell, and the artistic knowledge of Mr. Godwin, I amindebted for a most delightful afternoon. Few things are so pleasurableas to be able by an hour's drive to exchange Piccadilly for Parnassus. 

A HANDBOOK TO MARRIAGE

(Pall Mall Gazette, November 18, 1885. )

In spite of its somewhat alarming title this book may be highlyrecommended to every one. As for the authorities the author quotes, theyare almost numberless, and range from Socrates down to Artemus Ward. Hetells us of the wicked bachelor who spoke of marriage as 'a very harmlessamusement' and advised a young friend of his to 'marry early and marryoften'; of Dr. Johnson who proposed that marriage should be arranged bythe Lord Chancellor, without the parties concerned having any choice inthe matter; of the Sussex labourer who asked, 'Why should I give a womanhalf my victuals for cooking the other half?' and of Lord Verulam whothought that unmarried men did the best public work. And, indeed, marriage is the one subject on which all women agree and all mendisagree. Our author, however, is clearly of the same opinion as theScotch lassie who, on her father warning her what a solemn thing it wasto get married, answered, 'I ken that, father, but it's a great dealsolemner to be single. ' He may be regarded as the champion of themarried life. Indeed, he has a most interesting chapter on marriage-mademen, and though he dissents, and we think rightly, from the view recentlyput forward by a lady or two on the Women's Rights platform that Solomonowed all his wisdom to the number of his wives, still he appeals toBismarck, John Stuart Mill, Mahommed and Lord Beaconsfield, as instancesof men whose success can be traced to the influence of the women theymarried. Archbishop Whately once defined woman as 'a creature that doesnot reason and pokes the fire from the top, ' but since his day the highereducation of women has considerably altered their position. Women havealways had an emotional sympathy with those they love; Girton and Newnhamhave rendered intellectual sympathy also possible. In our day it is bestfor a man to be married, and men must give up the tyranny in married lifewhich was once so dear to them, and which, we are afraid, lingers still, here and there. 

'Do you wish to be my wife, Mabel?' said a little boy. 

'Yes, ' incautiously answered Mabel. 

'Then pull off my boots. '

On marriage vows our author has, too, very sensible views and veryamusing stories. He tells of a nervous bridegroom who, confusing thebaptismal and marriage ceremonies, replied when asked if he consented totake the bride for his wife: 'I renounce them all'; of a Hampshire rusticwho, when giving the ring, said solemnly to the bride: 'With my body Ithee wash up, and with all my hurdle goods I thee and thou'; of anotherwho, when asked whether he would take his partner to be his wedded wife, replied with shameful indecision: 'Yes, I'm willin'; but I'd a sightrather have her sister'; and of a Scotch lady who, on the occasion of herdaughter's wedding, was asked by an old friend whether she mightcongratulate her on the event, and answered: 'Yes, yes, upon the whole itis very satisfactory; it is true Jeannie hates her gudeman, but thenthere's always a something!' Indeed, the good stories contained in thisbook are quite endless and make it very pleasant reading, while the goodadvice is on all points admirable. 

Most young married people nowadays start in life with a dreadfulcollection of ormolu inkstands covered with sham onyxes, or with aperfect museum of salt-cellars. We strongly recommend this book as oneof the best of wedding presents. It is a complete handbook to an earthlyParadise, and its author may be regarded as the Murray of matrimony andthe Baedeker of bliss. 

How to be Happy though Married: Being a Handbook to Marriage. By aGraduate in the University of Matrimony. (T. Fisher Unwin. )

HALF-HOURS WITH THE WORST AUTHORS

(Pall Mall Gazette, January 15, 1886. )

I am very much pleased to see that you are beginning to call attention tothe extremely slipshod and careless style of our ordinarymagazine-writers. Will you allow me to refer your readers to an articleon Borrow, in the current number of Macmillan, which exemplifies veryclearly the truth of your remarks? The author of the article is Mr. George Saintsbury, a gentleman who has recently written a book on ProseStyle, and here are some specimens of the prose of the future accordingto the systeme Saintsbury:

1. He saw the rise, and, _in some instances, the death, of Tennyson_, Thackeray, Macaulay, Carlyle, Dickens. 

2. _See a place_ which Kingsley, _or_ Mr. Ruskin, _or_ some other masterof our decorative school, _have_ described--_much more_ one which hasfallen into the hands of the small fry of their imitators--and you arealmost sure to find that _it has been overdone_. 

3. The great mass of his translations, published and unpublished, andthe smaller mass of his early hackwork, no doubt _deserves_ judiciousexcerption. 

4. 'The Romany Rye' _did not appear_ for six years, _that is to say, in_1857. 

5. The elaborate apparatus which most prose tellers of fantastic tales_use_, and generally _fail in using_. 

6. The great writers, whether they try to be like other people or trynot to be like them (_and sometimes in the first case most of all_), succeed _only_ in being themselves. 

7. If he had a slight _overdose_ of Celtic blood and Celtic-peculiarity, it was _more than made up_ by the readiness of literary expression whichit gave him. He, if any one, bore an English heart, though, _as thereoften has been_, there was something perhaps more than English as well asless than it in his fashion of expression. 

8. His flashes of ethical reflection, which, though like _all_ ethicalreflections _often_ one-sided. 

9. He certainly was an _unfriend_ to Whiggery. 

10. _That it contains_ a great deal of quaint and piquant writing _isonly to say_ that its writer wrote it. 

11. 'Wild Wales, ' too, because of _its_ easy and direct _opportunity_ ofcomparing its description with the originals. 

12. The capital _and_ full-length portraits. 

13. Whose attraction is _one_ neither mainly nor in any very greatdegree one of pure form. 

14. _Constantly right in general_. 

These are merely a few examples of the style of Mr. Saintsbury, a writerwho seems quite ignorant of the commonest laws both of grammar and ofliterary expression, who has apparently no idea of the difference betweenthe pronouns 'this' and 'that, ' and has as little hesitation in endingthe clause of a sentence with a preposition, as he has in inserting aparenthesis between a preposition and its object, a mistake of which themost ordinary schoolboy would be ashamed. And why can not our magazine-writers use plain, simple English? _Unfriend_, quoted above, is a quiteunnecessary archaism, and so is such a phrase as _With this Borrow couldnot away_, in the sense of 'this Borrow could not endure. ' 'Borrow's_abstraction_ from general society' may, I suppose, pass muster. Popetalks somewhere of a hermit's 'abstraction, ' but what is the meaning ofsaying that the author of Lavengro _quartered_ Castile and Leon 'in themost interesting manner, riding everywhere with his servant'? And whatdefence can be made for such an expression as 'Scott, and other _blackbeasts_ of Borrow's'? Black beast for bete noire is really abominable. 

The object of my letter, however, is not to point out the deficiencies ofMr. Saintsbury's style, but to express my surprise that his articleshould have been admitted into the pages of a magazine like Macmillan's. Surely it does not require much experience to know that such an articleis a disgrace even to magazine literature. 

George Borrow. By George Saintsbury. (Macmillan's Magazine, January1886. )

ONE OF MR. CONWAY'S REMAINDERS

(Pall Mall Gazette, February 1, 1886. )

Most people know that in the concoction of a modern novel crime is a moreimportant ingredient than culture. Mr. Hugh Conway certainly knew it, and though for cleverness of invention and ingenuity of construction hecannot be compared to M. Gaboriau, that master of murder and itsmysteries, still he fully recognised the artistic value of villainy. Hislast novel, A Cardinal Sin, opens very well. Mr. Philip Bourchier, M. P. For Westshire and owner of Redhills, is travelling home from London in afirst-class railway carriage when, suddenly, through the window enters arough-looking middle-aged man brandishing a long-lost marriagecertificate, the effect of which is to deprive the right honourablemember of his property and estate. However, Mr. Bourchier, M. P. , isquite equal to the emergency. On the arrival of the train at itsdestination, he invites the unwelcome intruder to drive home with himand, reaching a lonely road, shoots him through the head and givesinformation to the nearest magistrate that he has rid society of adangerous highwayman. 

Mr. Bourchier is brought to trial and triumphantly acquitted. So far, everything goes well with him. Unfortunately, however, the murdered man, with that superhuman strength which on the stage and in novels alwaysaccompanies the agony of death, had managed in falling from the dog-cartto throw the marriage certificate up a fir tree! There it is found by aworthy farmer who talks that conventional rustic dialect which, thoughunknown in the provinces, is such a popular element in every Adelphimelodrama; and it ultimately falls into the hands of an unscrupulousyoung man who succeeds in blackmailing Mr. Bourchier and in marrying hisdaughter. Mr. Bourchier suffers tortures from excess of chloral and ofremorse; and there is psychology of a weird and wonderful kind, that kindwhich Mr. Conway may justly be said to have invented and the result ofwhich is not to be underrated. For, if to raise a goose skin on thereader be the aim of art, Mr. Conway must be regarded as a real artist. So harrowing is his psychology that the ordinary methods of punctuationare quite inadequate to convey it. Agony and asterisks follow each otheron every page and, as the murderer's conscience sinks deeper into chaos, the chaos of commas increases. 

Finally, Mr. Bourchier dies, splendide mendax to the end. A confession, he rightly argued, would break up the harmony of the family circle, particularly as his eldest son had married the daughter of his lucklessvictim. Few criminals are so thoughtful for others as Mr. Bourchier is, and we are not without admiration for the unselfishness of one who cangive up the luxury of a death-bed repentance. 

A Cardinal Sin, then, on the whole, may be regarded as a crude novel of acommon melodramatic type. What is painful about it is its style, whichis slipshod and careless. To describe a honeymoon as a _rare occurrencein any one person's life_ is rather amusing. There is an American storyof a young couple who had to be married by telephone, as the bridegroomlived in Nebraska and the bride in New York, and they had to go onseparate honeymoons; though, perhaps, this is not what Mr. Conway meant. But what can be said for a sentence like this?--'The establishedfavourites in the musical world are never quite sure but the _new comer_may not be _one among the many they have seen fail_'; or this?--'As it isthe fate of such a very small number of men to marry a prima donna, Ishall be doing little harm, _or be likely to change plans of life_, byenumerating some of the disadvantages. ' The nineteenth century may be aprosaic age, but we fear that, if we are to judge by the general run ofnovels, it is not an age of prose. 

A Cardinal Sin. By Hugh Conway. (Remington and Co. )

TO READ OR NOT TO READ

(Pall Mall Gazette, February 8, 1886. )

Books, I fancy, may be conveniently divided into three classes:--

1. Books to read, such as Cicero's Letters, Suetonius, Vasari's Lives ofthe Painters, the Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini, Sir JohnMandeville, Marco Polo, St. Simon's Memoirs, Mommsen, and (till we get abetter one) Grote's History of Greece. 

2. Books to re-read, such as Plato and Keats: in the sphere of poetry, the masters not the minstrels; in the sphere of philosophy, the seers notthe savants. 

3. Books not to read at all, such as Thomson's Seasons, Rogers's Italy, Paley's Evidences, all the Fathers except St. Augustine, all John StuartMill except the essay on Liberty, all Voltaire's plays without anyexception, Butler's Analogy, Grant's Aristotle, Hume's England, Lewes'sHistory of Philosophy, all argumentative books and all books that try toprove anything. 

The third class is by far the most important. To tell people what toread is, as a rule, either useless or harmful; for, the appreciation ofliterature is a question of temperament not of teaching; to Parnassusthere is no primer and nothing that one can learn is ever worth learning. But to tell people what not to read is a very different matter, and Iventure to recommend it as a mission to the University Extension Scheme. 

Indeed, it is one that is eminently needed in this age of ours, an agethat reads so much, that it has no time to admire, and writes so much, that it has no time to think. Whoever will select out of the chaos ofour modern curricula 'The Worst Hundred Books, ' and publish a list ofthem, will confer on the rising generation a real and lasting benefit. 

After expressing these views I suppose I should not offer any suggestionsat all with regard to 'The Best Hundred Books, ' but I hope you will allowme the pleasure of being inconsistent, as I am anxious to put in a claimfor a book that has been strangely omitted by most of the excellentjudges who have contributed to your columns. I mean the Greek Anthology. The beautiful poems contained in this collection seem to me to hold thesame position with regard to Greek dramatic literature as do the delicatelittle figurines of Tanagra to the Phidian marbles, and to be quite asnecessary for the complete understanding of the Greek spirit. 

I am also amazed to find that Edgar Allan Poe has been passed over. Surely this marvellous lord of rhythmic expression deserves a place? If, in order to make room for him, it be necessary to elbow out some oneelse, I should elbow out Southey, and I think that Baudelaire might bemost advantageously substituted for Keble. 

No doubt, both in the Curse of Kehama and in the Christian Year there arepoetic qualities of a certain kind, but absolute catholicity of taste isnot without its dangers. It is only an auctioneer who should admire allschools of art. 

TWELFTH NIGHT AT OXFORD

(Dramatic Review, February 20, 1886. )

On Saturday last the new theatre at Oxford was opened by the UniversityDramatic Society. The play selected was Shakespeare's delightful comedyof Twelfth Night, a play eminently suitable for performance by a club, asit contains so many good acting parts. Shakespeare's tragedies may bemade for a single star, but his comedies are made for a galaxy ofconstellations. In the first he deals with the pathos of the individual, in the second he gives us a picture of life. The Oxford undergraduates, then, are to be congratulated on the selection of the play, and theresult fully justified their choice. Mr. Bourchier as Festa the clownwas easy, graceful and joyous, as fanciful as his dress and as funny ashis bauble. The beautiful songs which Shakespeare has assigned to thischaracter were rendered by him as charmingly as they were dramatically. To act singing is quite as great an art as to sing. Mr. Letchmere Stuartwas a delightful Sir Andrew, and gave much pleasure to the audience. Onemay hate the villains of Shakespeare, but one cannot help loving hisfools. Mr. Macpherson was, perhaps, hardly equal to such an immortalpart as that of Sir Toby Belch, though there was much that was clever inhis performance. Mr. Lindsay threw new and unexpected light on thecharacter of Fabian, and Mr. Clark's Malvolio was a most remarkable pieceof acting. What a difficult part Malvolio is! Shakespeare undoubtedlymeant us to laugh all through at the pompous steward, and to join in thepractical joke upon him, and yet how impossible not to feel a good dealof sympathy with him! Perhaps in this century we are too altruistic tobe really artistic. Hazlitt says somewhere that poetical justice is donehim in the uneasiness which Olivia suffers on account of her mistakenattachment to Orsino, as her insensibility to the violence of the Duke'spassion is atoned for by the discovery of Viola's concealed love for him;but it is difficult not to feel Malvolio's treatment is unnecessarilyharsh. Mr. Clark, however, gave a very clever rendering, full of subtletouches. If I ventured on a bit of advice, which I feel most reluctantto do, it would be to the effect that while one should always study themethod of a great artist, one should never imitate his manner. Themanner of an artist is essentially individual, the method of an artist isabsolutely universal. The first is personality, which no one shouldcopy; the second is perfection, which all should aim at. Miss Arnold wasa most sprightly Maria, and Miss Farmer a dignified Olivia; but as ViolaMrs. Bewicke was hardly successful. Her manner was too boisterous andher method too modern. Where there is violence there is no Viola, wherethere is no illusion there is no Illyria, and where there is no stylethere is no Shakespeare. Mr. Higgins looked the part of Sebastian toperfection, and some of the minor characters were excellently played byMr. Adderley, Mr. King-Harman, Mr. Coningsby Disraeli and Lord AlbertOsborne. On the whole, the performance reflected much credit on theDramatic Society; indeed, its excellence was such that I am led to hopethat the University will some day have a theatre of its own, and thatproficiency in scene-painting will be regarded as a necessaryqualification for the Slade Professorship. On the stage, literaturereturns to life and archaeology becomes art. A fine theatre is a templewhere all the muses may meet, a second Parnassus, and the dramaticspirit, though she has long tarried at Cambridge, seems now to bemigrating to Oxford. 

 Thebes did her green unknowing youth engage; She chooses Athens in her riper age. 

THE LETTERS OF A GREAT WOMAN

(Pall Mall Gazette, March 6, 1886. )

Of the many collections of letters that have appeared in this centuryfew, if any, can rival for fascination of style and variety of incidentthe letters of George Sand which have recently been translated intoEnglish by M. Ledos de Beaufort. They extend over a space of more thansixty years, from 1812 to 1876, in fact, and comprise the first lettersof Aurore Dupin, a child of eight years old, as well as the last lettersof George Sand, a woman of seventy-two. The very early letters, those ofthe child and of the young married woman, possess, of course, merely apsychological interest; but from 1831, the date of Madame Dudevant'sseparation from her husband and her first entry into Paris life, theinterest becomes universal, and the literary and political history ofFrance is mirrored in every page. 

For George Sand was an indefatigable correspondent; she longs in one ofher letters, it is true, for 'a planet where reading and writing areabsolutely unknown, ' but still she had a real pleasure in letter-writing. Her greatest delight was the communication of ideas, and she is always inthe heart of the battle. She discusses pauperism with Louis Napoleon inhis prison at Ham, and liberty with Armand Barbes in his dungeon atVincennes; she writes to Lamennais on philosophy, to Mazzini onsocialism, to Lamartine on democracy, and to Ledru-Rollin on justice. Herletters reveal to us not merely the life of a great novelist but the soulof a great woman, of a woman who was one with all the noblest movementsof her day and whose sympathy with humanity was boundless absolutely. Forthe aristocracy of intellect she had always the deepest veneration, butthe democracy of suffering touched her more. She preached theregeneration of mankind, not with the noisy ardour of the paid advocate, but with the enthusiasm of the true evangelist. Of all the artists ofthis century she was the most altruistic; she felt every one'smisfortunes except her own. Her faith never left her; to the end of herlife, as she tells us, she was able to believe without illusions. Butthe people disappointed her a little. She saw that they followed personsnot principles, and for 'the great man theory' George Sand had norespect. 'Proper names are the enemies of principles' is one of heraphorisms. 

So from 1850 her letters are more distinctly literary. She discussesmodern realism with Flaubert, and play-writing with Dumas fils; andprotests with passionate vehemence against the doctrine of L'art pourl'art. 'Art for the sake of itself is an idle sentence, ' she writes;'art for the sake of truth, for the sake of what is beautiful and good, that is the creed I seek. ' And in a delightful letter to M. CharlesPoncy she repeats the same idea very charmingly. 'People say that birdssing for the sake of singing, but I doubt it. They sing their loves andhappiness, and in that they are in keeping with nature. But man must dosomething more, and poets only sing in order to move people and to makethem think. ' She wanted M. Poncy to be the poet of the people and, ifgood advice were all that had been needed, he would certainly have beenthe Burns of the workshop. She drew out a delightful scheme for a volumeto be called Songs of all Trades and saw the possibilities of makinghandicrafts poetic. Perhaps she valued good intentions in art a littletoo much, and she hardly understood that art for art's sake is not meantto express the final cause of art but is merely a formula of creation;but, as she herself had scaled Parnassus, we must not quarrel at herbringing Proletarianism with her. For George Sand must be ranked amongour poetic geniuses. She regarded the novel as still within the domainof poetry. Her heroes are not dead photographs; they are greatpossibilities. Modern novels are dissections; hers are dreams. 'I makepopular types, ' she writes, 'such as I do no longer see, but such as theyshould and might be. ' For realism, in M. Zola's acceptation of the word, she had no admiration. Art to her was a mirror that transfigured truthsbut did not represent realities. Hence she could not understand artwithout personality. 'I am aware, ' she writes to Flaubert, 'that you areopposed to the exposition of personal doctrine in literature. Are youright? Does not your opposition proceed rather from a want of convictionthan from a principle of aesthetics? If we have any philosophy in ourbrain it must needs break forth in our writings. But you, as soon as youhandle literature, you seem anxious, I know not why, to be another man, the one who must disappear, who annihilates himself and is no more. Whata singular mania! What a deficient taste! The worth of our productionsdepends entirely on our own. Besides, if we withhold our own opinionsrespecting the personages we create, we naturally leave the reader inuncertainty as to the opinion he should himself form of them. Thatamounts to wishing not to be understood, and the result of this is thatthe reader gets weary of us and leaves us. '

She herself, however, may be said to have suffered from too dominant apersonality, and this was the reason of the failure of most of her plays. 

Of the drama in the sense of disinterested presentation she had no idea, and what is the strength and life-blood of her novels is the weakness ofher dramatic works. But in the main she was right. Art withoutpersonality is impossible. And yet the aim of art is not to revealpersonality, but to please. This she hardly recognised in her aesthetics, though she realised it in her work. On literary style she has someexcellent remarks. She dislikes the extravagances of the romantic schooland sees the beauty of simplicity. 'Simplicity, ' she writes, 'is themost difficult thing to secure in this world: it is the last limit ofexperience and the last effort of genius. ' She hated the slang and argotof Paris life, and loved the words used by the peasants in the provinces. 'The provinces, ' she remarks, 'preserve the tradition of the originaltongue and create but few new words. I feel much respect for thelanguage of the peasantry; in my estimation it is the more correct. '

She thought Flaubert too much preoccupied with the sense of form, andmakes these excellent observations to him--perhaps her best piece ofliterary criticism. 'You consider the form as the aim, whereas it is butthe effect. Happy expressions are only the outcome of emotion andemotion itself proceeds from a conviction. We are only moved by thatwhich we ardently believe in. ' Literary schools she distrusted. Individualism was to her the keystone of art as well as of life. 'Do notbelong to any school: do not imitate any model, ' is her advice. Yet shenever encouraged eccentricity. 'Be correct, ' she writes to EugenePelletan, 'that is rarer than being eccentric, as the time goes. It ismuch more common to please by bad taste than to receive the cross ofhonour. '

On the whole, her literary advice is sound and healthy. She nevershrieks and she never sneers. She is the incarnation of good sense. Andthe whole collection of her letters is a perfect treasure-house ofsuggestions both on art and on politics. The manner of the translationis often rather clumsy, but the matter is always so intensely interestingthat we can afford to be charitable. 

Letters of George Sand. Translated and edited by Raphael Ledos deBeaufort. (Ward and Downey. )

NEWS FROM PARNASSUS

(Pall Mall Gazette, April 12, 1886. )

That most delightful of all French critics, M. Edmond Scherer, hasrecently stated in an article on Wordsworth that the English read farmore poetry than any other European nation. We sincerely hope this maybe true, not merely for the sake of the public but for the sake of thepoets also. It would be sad indeed if the many volumes of poems that areevery year published in London found no readers but the authorsthemselves and the authors' relations; and the real philanthropist shouldrecognise it as part of his duties to buy every new book of verse thatappears. Sometimes, we acknowledge, he will be disappointed, often hewill be bored; still now and then he will be amply rewarded for hisreckless benevolence. 

Mr. George Francis Armstrong's Stories of Wicklow, for instance, is mostpleasant reading. Mr. Armstrong is already well known as the author ofUgone, King Saul and other dramas, and his latest volume shows that thepower and passion of his early work has not deserted him. Most modernIrish poetry is purely political and deals with the wickedness of thelandlords and the Tories; but Mr. Armstrong sings of the picturesquenessof Erin, not of its politics. He tells us very charmingly of the magicof its mists and the melody of its colour, and draws a most captivatingpicture of the peasants of the county Wicklow, whom he describes as

 A kindly folk in vale and moor, Unvexed with rancours, frank and free In mood and manners--rich with poor Attuned in happiest amity: Where still the cottage door is wide, The stranger welcomed at the hearth, And pleased the humbler hearts confide Still in the friend of gentler birth. 

The most ambitious poem in the volume is De Verdun of Darragh. It is atonce lyrical and dramatic, and though its manner reminds us of Browningand its method of Maud, still all through it there is a personal andindividual note. Mr. Armstrong also carefully observes the rules ofdecorum, and, as he promises his readers in a preface, keeps quite clearof 'the seas of sensual art. ' In fact, an elderly maiden lady could readthis volume without a blush, a thrill, or even an emotion. 

Dr. Goodchild does not possess Mr. Armstrong's literary touch, but hisSomnia Medici is distinguished by a remarkable quality of forcible anddirect expression. The poem that opens his volume, Myrrha, or A Dialogueon Creeds, is quite as readable as a metrical dialogue on creeds couldpossibly be; and The Organ Builder is a most romantic story charminglytold. Dr. Goodchild seems to be an ardent disciple of Mr. Browning, andthough he may not be able to reproduce the virtues of his master, atleast he can echo his defects very cleverly. Such a verse as--

 'Tis the subtle essayal Of the Jews and Judas, Such lying lisp Might hail a will-o'-the-wisp, A thin somebody--Theudas--

is an excellent example of low comedy in poetry. One of the best poemsin the book is The Ballad of Three Kingdoms. Indeed, if the form wereequal to the conception, it would be a delightful work of art; but Dr. Goodchild, though he may be a master of metres, is not a master of musicyet. His verse is often harsh and rugged. On the whole, however, hisvolume is clever and interesting. 

Mr. Keene has not, we believe, a great reputation in England as yet, butin India he seems to be well known. From a collection of criticismsappended to his volume it appears that the Overland Mail has christenedhim the Laureate of Hindostan and that the Allahabad Pioneer oncecompared him to Keats. He is a pleasant rhymer, as rhymers go, and, though we strongly object to his putting the Song of Solomon into badblank verse, still we are quite ready to admire his translations of thePervigilium Veneris and of Omar Khayyam. We wish he would not writesonnets with fifteen lines. A fifteen-line sonnet is as bad amonstrosity as a sonnet in dialogue. The volume has the merit of beingvery small, and contains many stanzas quite suitable for valentines. 

Finally we come to Procris and Other Poems, by Mr. W. G. Hole. Mr. Holeis apparently a very young writer. His work, at least, is full ofcrudities, his syntax is defective, and his grammar is questionable. Andyet, when all is said, in the one poem of Procris it is easy to recognisethe true poetic ring. Elsewhere the volume is amateurish and weak. TheSpanish Main was suggested by a leader in the Daily Telegraph, and bearsall the traces of its lurid origin. Sir Jocellyn's Trust is a sort ofpseudo-Tennysonian idyll in which the damozel says to her gallantrescuer, 'Come, come, Sir Knight, I catch my death of cold, ' andrecompenses him with

 What noble minds Regard the first reward, --an orphan's thanks. 

Nunc Dimittis is dull and The Wandering Jew dreadful; but Procris is abeautiful poem. The richness and variety of its metaphors, the music ofits lines, the fine opulence of its imagery, all seem to point to a newpoet. Faults, it is true, there are in abundance; but they are faultsthat come from want of trouble, not from want of taste. Mr. Hole showsoften a rare and exquisite sense of beauty and a marvellous power ofpoetic vision, and if he will cultivate the technique of his craft alittle more we have no doubt but that he will some day give us workworthy to endure. It is true that there is more promise than perfectionin his verse at present, yet it is a promise that seems likely to befulfilled. 

(1) Stories of Wicklow. By George Francis Armstrong, M. A. (Longmans, Green and Co. )

(2) Somnia Medici. By John A. Goodchild. Second Series. (Kegan Paul. )

(3) Verses: Translated and Original. By H. E. Keene. (W. H. Allen andCo. )

(4) Procris and Other Poems. By W. G. Hole. (Kegan Paul. )

SOME NOVELS

(Pall Mall Gazette, April 14, 1886. )

After a careful perusal of 'Twixt Love and Duty, by Mr. Tighe Hopkins, weconfess ourselves unable to inform anxious inquirers who it is that isthus sandwiched, and how he (or she) got into so unpleasant apredicament. The curious reader with a taste for enigmas may be advisedto find out for himself--if he can. Even if he be unsuccessful, histrouble will be repaid by the pleasant writing and clever characterdrawing of Mr. Hopkins's tale. The plot is less praiseworthy. The wholeMadeira episode seems to lead up to this dilemma, and after all it comesto nothing. We brace up our nerves for a tragedy and are treated insteadto the mildest of marivaudage--which is disappointing. In conclusion, one word of advice to Mr. Hopkins: let him refrain from apostrophisinghis characters after this fashion: 'Oh, Gilbert Reade, what are you aboutthat you dally with this golden chance?' and so forth. This is one ofthe worst mannerisms of a bygone generation of story tellers. 

Mr. Gallenga has written, as he says, 'a tale without a murder, ' buthaving put a pistol-ball through his hero's chest and left him alive andhearty notwithstanding, he cannot be said to have produced a tale withouta miracle. His heroine, too, if we may judge by his descriptions of her, is 'all a wonder and a wild desire. ' At the age of seventeen she 'wasone of the Great Maker's masterpieces . . . A living likeness of theDresden Madonna. ' One rather shudders to think of what she may become atforty, but this is an impertinent prying into futurity. She hails from'Maryland, my Maryland!' and has 'received a careful, if not a superior, education. ' Need we add that she marries the heir to an earldom who, asaforesaid, has had himself perforated by a pistol-bullet on her behalf?Mr. Gallenga's division of this book into acts and scenes is notjustified by anything specially dramatic either in its structure or itsmethod. The dialogue, in truth, is somewhat stilted. Nevertheless, itsfirst-hand sketches of Roman society are not without interest, and one ortwo characters seem to be drawn from nature. 

The Life's Mistake which forms the theme of Mrs. Lovett Cameron's twovolumes is not a mistake after all, but results in unmixed felicity; andas it is brought about by fraud on the part of the hero, this conclusionis not as moral as it might be. For the rest, the tale is a veryfamiliar one. Its personages are the embarrassed squire with hischarming daughter, the wealthy and amorous mortgagee, and the sailorlover who is either supposed to be drowned or falsely represented to befickle--in Mrs. Cameron's tale he is both in succession. When we addthat there is a stanza from Byron on the title-page and a poeticalquotation at the beginning of each chapter, we have possessed thediscerning reader of all necessary information both as to the matter andthe manner of Mrs. Cameron's performance. 

Mr. E. O. Pleydell-Bouverie has endowed the novel-writing fraternity witha new formula for the composition of titles. After J. S. ; or, Trivialities there is no reason why we should not have A. B. ; or, Platitudes, M. N. ; or, Sentimentalisms, Y. Z. ; or, Inanities. There aremany books which these simple titles would characterise much more aptlythan any high-flown phrases--as aptly, in fact, as Mr. Bouverie's titlecharacterises the volume before us. It sets forth the uninterestingfortunes of an insignificant person, one John Stiles, a brieflessbarrister. The said John falls in love with a young lady, inherits acompetence, omits to tell his love, and is killed by the bursting of afowling-piece--that is all. The only point of interest presented by thebook is the problem as to how it ever came to be written. We canscarcely find the solution in Mr. Bouverie's elaborately smart stylewhich cannot be said to transmute his 'trivialities' into 'flies inamber. '

Mr. Swinburne once proposed that it should be a penal offence againstliterature for any writer to affix a proverb, a phrase or a quotation toa novel, by way of tag or title. We wonder what he would say to thetitle of 'Pen Oliver's' last book! Probably he would empty on it thebitter vial of his scorn and satire. All But is certainly an intolerablename to give to any literary production. The story, however, is quite aninteresting one. At Laxenford Hall live Lord and Lady Arthur Winstanley. Lady Arthur has two children by her first marriage, the elder of whom, Walter Hope-Kennedy by name, is heir to the broad acres. Walter is apleasant English boy, fonder of cricket than of culture, healthy, happyand susceptible. He falls in love with Fanny Taylor, a pretty villagegirl; is thrown out of his dog-cart one night through the machinations ofa jealous rival, breaks one of his ribs and gets a violent fever. Hisstepfather tries to murder him by subcutaneous injections of morphia butis detected by the local doctor, and Walter recovers. However, he doesnot marry Fanny after all, and the story ends ineffectually. To say of adress that 'it was rather under than over adorned' is not very pleasingEnglish, and such a phrase as 'almost always, but by no meansinvariably, ' is quite detestable. Still we must not expect the master ofthe scalpel to be the master of the stilus as well. All But is a verycharming tale, and the sketches of village life are quite admirable. Werecommend it to all who are tired of the productions of Mr. Hugh Conway'sdreadful disciples. 

(1) 'Twixt Love and Duty: A Novel. By Tighe Hopkins. (Chatto andWindus. )

(2) Jenny Jennet: A Tale Without a Murder. By A. Gallenga. (Chapman andHall. )

(3) A Life's Mistake: A Novel. By Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron. (Ward andDowney. )

(4) J. S. ; or, Trivialities: A Novel. By Edward OliverPleydell-Bouverie. (Griffith, Farren and Co. )

(5) All But: A Chronicle of Laxenford Life. By Pen Oliver, F. R. C. S. (Kegan Paul. )

A LITERARY PILGRIM

(Pall Mall Gazette, April 17, 1886. )

Antiquarian books, as a rule, are extremely dull reading. They give usfacts without form, science without style, and learning without life. Anexception, however, must be made for M. Gaston Boissier's PromenadesArcheologiques. M. Boissier is a most pleasant and picturesque writer, and is really able to give his readers useful information without everboring them, an accomplishment which is entirely unknown in Germany, andin England is extremely rare. 

The first essay in his book is on the probable site of Horace's country-house, a subject that has interested many scholars from the Renaissancedown to our own day. M. Boissier, following the investigations of SignorRosa, places it on a little hill over-looking the Licenza, and his theoryhas a great deal to recommend it. The plough still turns up on the spotthe bricks and tiles of an old Roman villa; a spring of clear water, likethat of which the poet so often sang, 'breaks babbling from the hollowrock, ' and is still called by the peasants Fonte dell' Oratini, somefaint echo possibly of the singer's name; the view from the hill is justwhat is described in the epistles, 'Continui montes nisi dissocienturopaca valle'; hard by is the site of the ruined temple of Vacuna, whereHorace tells us he wrote one of his poems, and the local rustics still goto Varia (Vicovaro) on market days as they used to do when the gracefulRoman lyrist sauntered through his vines and played at being a countrygentleman. 

M. Boissier, however, is not content merely with identifying the poet'shouse; he also warmly defends him from the charge that has been broughtagainst him of servility in accepting it. He points out that it was onlyafter the invention of printing that literature became a money-makingprofession, and that, as there was no copyright law at Rome to preventbooks being pirated, patrons had to take the place that publishers hold, or should hold, nowadays. The Roman patron, in fact, kept the Roman poetalive, and we fancy that many of our modern bards rather regret the oldsystem. Better, surely, the humiliation of the sportula than theindignity of a bill for printing! Better to accept a country-house as agift than to be in debt to one's landlady! On the whole, the patron wasan excellent institution, if not for poetry at least for the poets; andthough he had to be propitiated by panegyrics, still are we not told byour most shining lights that the subject is of no importance in a work ofart? M. Boissier need not apologise for Horace: every poet longs for aMaecenas. 

An essay on the Etruscan tombs at Corneto follows, and the remainder ofthe volume is taken up by a most fascinating article called Le Pays del'Eneide. M. Boissier claims for Virgil's descriptions of scenery anabsolute fidelity of detail. 'Les poetes anciens, ' he says, 'ont le goutde la precision et de la fidelite: ils n'imaginent guere de paysages enl'air, ' and with this view he visited every place in Italy and Sicilythat Virgil has mentioned. Sometimes, it is true, modern civilisation, or modern barbarism, has completely altered the aspect of the scene; the'desolate shore of Drepanum, ' for instance ('Drepani illaetabilis ora')is now covered with thriving manufactories and stucco villas, and the'bird-haunted forest' through which the Tiber flowed into the sea haslong ago disappeared. Still, on the whole, the general character of theItalian landscape is unchanged, and M. Boissier's researches show veryclearly how personal and how vivid were Virgil's impressions of nature. The subject is, of course, a most interesting one, and those who love tomake pilgrimages without stirring from home cannot do better than spendthree shillings on the French Academician's Promenades Archeologiques. 

Nouvelles Promenades Archeologiques, Horace et Virgile. By GastonBoissier. (Hachette. )

BERANGER IN ENGLAND

(Pall Mall Gazette, April 21, 1886. )

A philosophic politician once remarked that the best possible form ofgovernment is an absolute monarchy tempered by street ballads. Withoutat all agreeing with this aphorism we still cannot but regret that thenew democracy does not use poetry as a means for the expression ofpolitical opinion. The Socialists, it is true, have been heard singingthe later poems of Mr. William Morris, but the street ballad is reallydead in England. The fact is that most modern poetry is so artificial inits form, so individual in its essence and so literary in its style, thatthe people as a body are little moved by it, and when they havegrievances against the capitalist or the aristocrat they prefer strikesto sonnets and rioting to rondels. 

Possibly, Mr. William Toynbee's pleasant little volume of translationsfrom Beranger may be the herald of a new school. Beranger had all thequalifications for a popular poet. He wrote to be sung more than to beread; he preferred the Pont Neuf to Parnassus; he was patriotic as wellas romantic, and humorous as well as humane. Translations of poetry as arule are merely misrepresentations, but the muse of Beranger is so simpleand naive that she can wear our English dress with ease and grace, andMr. Toynbee has kept much of the mirth and music of the original. Hereand there, undoubtedly, the translation could be improved upon; 'rapiers'for instance is an abominable rhyme to 'forefathers'; 'the hated arms ofAlbion' in the same poem is a very feeble rendering of 'le leopard del'Anglais, ' and such a verse as

 'Mid France's miracles of art, Rare trophies won from art's own land, I've lived to see with burning heart The fog-bred poor triumphant stand, reproduces very inadequately the charm of the original:

 Dans nos palais, ou, pres de la victoire, Brillaient les arts, doux fruits des beaux climats, J'ai vu du Nord les peuplades sans gloire, De leurs manteaux secouer les frimas. 

On the whole, however, Mr. Toynbee's work is good; Les Champs, forexample, is very well translated, and so are the two delightful poemsRosette and Ma Republique; and there is a good deal of spirit in LeMarquis de Carabas:

 Whom have we here in conqueror's role? Our grand old Marquis, bless his soul! Whose grand old charger (mark his bone!) Has borne him back to claim his own. Note, if you please, the grand old style In which he nears his grand old pile; With what an air of grand old state He waves that blade immaculate! Hats off, hats off, for my lord to pass, The grand old Marquis of Carabas!--

though 'that blade immaculate' has hardly got the sting of 'un sabreinnocent'; and in the fourth verse of the same poem, 'Marquise, you'llhave the bed-chamber' does not very clearly convey the sense of the line'La Marquise a le tabouret. ' The best translation in the book is TheCourt Suit (L'Habit de Cour), and if Mr. Toynbee will give us some morework as clever as this we shall be glad to see a second volume from hispen. Beranger is not nearly well enough known in England, and though itis always better to read a poet in the original, still translations havetheir value as echoes have their music. 

A Selection from the Songs of De Beranger in English Verse. By WilliamToynbee. (Kegan Paul. )

THE POETRY OF THE PEOPLE

(Pall Mall Gazette, May 13, 1886. )

The Countess Martinengo deserves well of all poets, peasants andpublishers. Folklore is so often treated nowadays merely from the pointof view of the comparative mythologist, that it is really delightful tocome across a book that deals with the subject simply as literature. Forthe Folk-tale is the father of all fiction as the Folk-song is the motherof all poetry; and in the games, the tales and the ballads of primitivepeople it is easy to see the germs of such perfected forms of art as thedrama, the novel and the epic. It is, of course, true that the highestexpression of life is to be found not in the popular songs, howeverpoetical, of any nation, but in the great masterpieces of self-consciousArt; yet it is pleasant sometimes to leave the summit of Parnassus tolook at the wild-flowers in the valley, and to turn from the lyre ofApollo to listen to the reed of Pan. We can still listen to it. To thisday, the vineyard dressers of Calabria will mock the passer-by withsatirical verses as they used to do in the old pagan days, and thepeasants of the olive woods of Provence answer each other in amoebaeanstrains. The Sicilian shepherd has not yet thrown his pipe aside, andthe children of modern Greece sing the swallow-song through the villagesin spring-time, though Theognis is more than two thousand years dead. Noris this popular poetry merely the rhythmic expression of joy and sorrow;it is in the highest degree imaginative; and taking its inspirationdirectly from nature it abounds in realistic metaphor and in picturesqueand fantastic imagery. It must, of course, be admitted that there is aconventionality of nature as there is a conventionality of art, and thatcertain forms of utterance are apt to become stereotyped by too constantuse; yet, on the whole, it is impossible not to recognise in the Folk-songs that the Countess Martinengo has brought together one strongdominant note of fervent and flawless sincerity. Indeed, it is only inthe more terrible dramas of the Elizabethan age that we can find anyparallel to the Corsican voceri with their shrill intensity of passion, their awful frenzies of grief and hate. And yet, ardent as the feelingis, the form is nearly always beautiful. Now and then, in the poems ofthe extreme South one meets with a curious crudity of realism, but, as arule, the sense of beauty prevails. 

Some of the Folk-poems in this book have all the lightness and lovelinessof lyrics, all of them have that sweet simplicity of pure song by whichmirth finds its own melody and mourning its own music, and even wherethere are conceits of thought and expression they are conceits born offancy not of affectation. Herrick himself might have envied thatwonderful love-song of Provence:

 If thou wilt be the falling dew And fall on me alway, Then I will be the white, white rose On yonder thorny spray. If thou wilt be the white, white rose On yonder thorny spray, Then I will be the honey-bee And kiss thee all the day. 

 If thou wilt be the honey-bee And kiss me all the day, Then I will be in yonder heaven The star of brightest ray. If thou wilt be in yonder heaven The star of brightest ray, Then I will be the dawn, and we Shall meet at break of day. 

How charming also is this lullaby by which the Corsican mother sings herbabe to sleep!

 Gold and pearls my vessel lade, Silk and cloth the cargo be, All the sails are of brocade Coming from beyond the sea; And the helm of finest gold, Made a wonder to behold. Fast awhile in slumber lie; Sleep, my child, and hushaby. 

 After you were born full soon, You were christened all aright; Godmother she was the moon, Godfather the sun so bright. All the stars in heaven told Wore their necklaces of gold. Fast awhile in slumber lie; Sleep, my child, and hushaby. 

Or this from Roumania:

 Sleep, my daughter, sleep an hour; Mother's darling gilliflower. Mother rocks thee, standing near, She will wash thee in the clear Waters that from fountains run, To protect thee from the sun. 

 Sleep, my darling, sleep an hour, Grow thou as the gilliflower. As a tear-drop be thou white, As a willow tall and slight; Gentle as the ring-doves are, And be lovely as a star!

We hardly know what poems are sung to English babies, but we hope theyare as beautiful as these two. Blake might have written them. 

The Countess Martinengo has certainly given us a most fascinating book. In a volume of moderate dimensions, not too long to be tiresome nor toobrief to be disappointing, she has collected together the best examplesof modern Folk-songs, and with her as a guide the lazy reader lounging inhis armchair may wander from the melancholy pine-forests of the North toSicily's orange-groves and the pomegranate gardens of Armenia, and listento the singing of those to whom poetry is a passion, not a profession, and whose art, coming from inspiration and not from schools, if it hasthe limitations, at least has also the loveliness of its origin, and isone with blowing grasses and the flowers of the field. 

Essays in the Study of Folk-Songs. By the Countess Evelyn MartinengoCesaresco. (Redway. )

THE CENCI

(Dramatic Review, May 15, 1886. )

The production of The Cenci last week at the Grand Theatre, Islington, may be said to have been an era in the literary history of this century, and the Shelley Society deserves the highest praise and warmest thanks ofall for having given us an opportunity of seeing Shelley's play under theconditions he himself desired for it. For The Cenci was writtenabsolutely with a view to theatric presentation, and had Shelley's ownwishes been carried out it would have been produced during his lifetimeat Covent Garden, with Edmund Kean and Miss O'Neill in the principalparts. In working out his conception, Shelley had studied very carefullythe aesthetics of dramatic art. He saw that the essence of the drama isdisinterested presentation, and that the characters must not be merelymouthpieces for splendid poetry but must be living subjects for terrorand for pity. 'I have endeavoured, ' he says, 'as nearly as possible torepresent the characters as they probably were, and have sought to avoidthe error of making them actuated by my own conception of right or wrong, false or true: thus under a thin veil converting names and actions of thesixteenth century into cold impersonations of my own mind. . . . 

'I have avoided with great care the introduction of what is commonlycalled mere poetry, and I imagine there will scarcely be found a detachedsimile or a single isolated description, unless Beatrice's description ofthe chasm appointed for her father's murder should be judged to be ofthat nature. '

He recognised that a dramatist must be allowed far greater freedom ofexpression than what is conceded to a poet. 'In a dramatic composition, 'to use his own words, 'the imagery and the passion should interpenetrateone another, the former being reserved simply for the full developmentand illustration of the latter. Imagination is as the immortal God whichshould assume flesh for the redemption of mortal passion. It is thusthat the most remote and the most familiar imagery may alike be fit fordramatic purposes when employed in the illustration of strong feeling, which raises what is low, and levels to the apprehension that which islofty, casting over all the shadow of its own greatness. In otherrespects I have written more carelessly, that is, without anover-fastidious and learned choice of words. In this respect I entirelyagree with those modern critics who assert that in order to move men totrue sympathy we must use the familiar language of men. '

He knew that if the dramatist is to teach at all it must be by example, not by precept. 

'The highest moral purpose, ' he remarks, 'aimed at in the highest speciesof the drama, is the teaching the human heart, through its sympathies andantipathies, the knowledge of itself; in proportion to the possession ofwhich knowledge every human being is wise, just, sincere, tolerant andkind. If dogmas can do more it is well: but a drama is no fit place forthe enforcement of them. ' He fully realises that it is by a conflictbetween our artistic sympathies and our moral judgment that the greatestdramatic effects are produced. 'It is in the restless and anatomisingcasuistry with which men seek the justification of Beatrice, yet feelthat she has done what needs justification; it is in the superstitioushorror with which they contemplate alike her wrongs and their revenge, that the dramatic character of what she did and suffered consists. '

In fact no one has more clearly understood than Shelley the mission ofthe dramatist and the meaning of the drama. 

And yet I hardly think that the production of The Cenci, its absolutepresentation on the stage, can be said to have added anything to itsbeauty, its pathos, or even its realism. Not that the principal actorswere at all unworthy of the work of art they interpreted; Mr. HermannVezin's Cenci was a noble and magnificent performance; Miss Alma Murraystands now in the very first rank of our English actresses as a mistressof power and pathos; and Mr. Leonard Outram's Orsino was most subtle andartistic; but that The Cenci needs for the production of its perfecteffect no interpretation at all. It is, as we read it, a complete workof art--capable, indeed, of being acted, but not dependent on theatricpresentation; and the impression produced by its exhibition on the stageseemed to me to be merely one of pleasure at the gratification of anintellectual curiosity of seeing how far Melpomene could survive thewagon of Thespis. 

In producing the play, however, the members of the Shelley Society weremerely carrying out the poet's own wishes, and they are to becongratulated on the success of their experiment--a success due not toany gorgeous scenery or splendid pageant, but to the excellence of theactors who aided them. 

HELENA IN TROAS

(Dramatic Review, May 22, 1880. )

One might have thought that to have produced As You Like It in an Englishforest would have satisfied the most ambitious spirit; but Mr. Godwin hasnot contented himself with his sylvan triumphs. From Shakespeare he haspassed to Sophocles, and has given us the most perfect exhibition of aGreek dramatic performance that has as yet been seen in this country. For, beautiful as were the productions of the Agamemnon at Oxford and theEumenides at Cambridge, their effects were marred in no small orunimportant degree by the want of a proper orchestra for the chorus withits dance and song, a want that was fully supplied in Mr. Godwin'spresentation by the use of the arena of a circus. 

In the centre of this circle, which was paved with the semblance oftesselated marble, stood the altar of Dionysios, and beyond it rose thelong, shallow stage, faced with casts from the temple of Bassae; andbearing the huge portal of the house of Paris and the gleamingbattlements of Troy. Over the portal hung a great curtain, painted withcrimson lions, which, when drawn aside, disclosed two massive gates ofbronze; in front of the house was placed a golden image of Aphrodite, andacross the ramparts on either hand could be seen a stretch of blue watersand faint purple hills. The scene was lovely, not merely in the harmonyof its colour but in the exquisite delicacy of its architecturalproportions. No nation has ever felt the pure beauty of mereconstruction so strongly as the Greeks, and in this respect Mr. Godwinhas fully caught the Greek feeling. 

The play opened by the entrance of the chorus, white vestured and goldfilleted, under the leadership of Miss Kinnaird, whose fine gestures andrhythmic movements were quite admirable. In answer to their appeal thestage curtains slowly divided, and from the house of Paris came forthHelen herself, in a robe woven with all the wonders of war, and broideredwith the pageant of battle. With her were her two handmaidens--one inwhite and yellow and one in green; Hecuba followed in sombre grey ofmourning, and Priam in kingly garb of gold and purple, and Paris inPhrygian cap and light archer's dress; and when at sunset the lover ofHelen was borne back wounded from the field, down from the oaks of Idastole OEnone in the flowing drapery of the daughter of a river-god, everyfold of her garments rippling like dim water as she moved. 

As regards the acting, the two things the Greeks valued most in actorswere grace of gesture and music of voice. Indeed, to gain these virtuestheir actors used to subject themselves to a regular course of gymnasticsand a particular regime of diet, health being to the Greeks not merely aquality of art, but a condition of its production. Whether or not ourEnglish actors hold the same view may be doubted; but Mr. Vezin certainlyhas always recognised the importance of a physical as well as of anintellectual training for the stage, and his performance of King Priamwas distinguished by stately dignity and most musical enunciation. WithMr. Vezin, grace of gesture is an unconscious result--not a consciouseffort. It has become nature, because it was once art. Mr. BeerbohmTree also is deserving of very high praise for his Paris. Ease andelegance characterised every movement he made, and his voice wasextremely effective. Mr. Tree is the perfect Proteus of actors. He canwear the dress of any century and the appearance of any age, and has amarvellous capacity of absorbing his personality into the character he iscreating. To have method without mannerism is given only to a few, butamong the few is Mr. Tree. Miss Alma Murray does not possess thephysique requisite for our conception of Helen, but the beauty of hermovements and the extremely sympathetic quality of her voice gave anindefinable charm to her performance. Mrs. Jopling looked like a poemfrom the Pantheon, and indeed the personae mutae were not the leasteffective figures in the play. Hecuba was hardly a success. In acting, the impression of sincerity is conveyed by tone, not by mere volume ofvoice, and whatever influence emotion has on utterance it is certainlynot in the direction of false emphasis. Mrs. Beerbohm Tree's OEnone wasmuch better, and had some fine moments of passion; but the harshrealistic shriek with which the nymph flung herself from the battlements, however effective it might have been in a comedy of Sardou, or in one ofMr. Burnand's farces, was quite out of place in the representation of aGreek tragedy. The classical drama is an imaginative, poetic art, whichrequires the grand style for its interpretation, and produces its effectsby the most ideal means. It is in the operas of Wagner, not in popularmelodrama, that any approximation to the Greek method can be found. Better to wear mask and buskin than to mar by any modernity of expressionthe calm majesty of Melpomene. 

As an artistic whole, however, the performance was undoubtedly a greatsuccess. It has been much praised for its archaeology, but Mr. Godwin issomething more than a mere antiquarian. He takes the facts ofarchaeology, but he converts them into artistic and dramatic effects, andthe historical accuracy that underlies the visible shapes of beauty thathe presents to us, is not by any means the distinguishing quality of thecomplete work of art. This quality is the absolute unity and harmony ofthe entire presentation, the presence of one mind controlling the mostminute details, and revealing itself only in that true perfection whichhides personality. On more than one occasion it seemed to me that thestage was kept a little too dark, and that a purely picturesque effect oflight and shade was substituted for the plastic clearness of outline thatthe Greeks so desired; some objection, too, might be made to the latecharacter of the statue of Aphrodite, which was decidedly post-Periclean;these, however, are unimportant points. The performance was not intendedto be an absolute reproduction of the Greek stage in the fifth centurybefore Christ: it was simply the presentation in Greek form of a poemconceived in the Greek spirit; and the secret of its beauty was theperfect correspondence of form and matter, the delicate equilibrium ofspirit and sense. 

As for the play, it had, of course, to throw away many sweet superfluousgraces of expression before it could adapt itself to the conditions oftheatrical presentation, but much that is good was retained; and thechoruses, which really possess some pure notes of lyric loveliness, weresung in their entirety. Here and there, it is true, occur such lines as--

 What wilt thou do? What can the handful still left?--

lines that owe their blank verse character more to the courtesy of theprinter than to the genius of the poet, for without rhythm and melodythere is no verse at all; and the attempt to fit Greek forms ofconstruction to our English language often gives the work the air of anawkward translation; however, there is a great deal that is pleasing inHelena in Troas and, on the whole, the play was worthy of its pageant andthe poem deserved the peplums. 

It is much to be regretted that Mr. Godwin's beautiful theatre cannot bemade a permanent institution. Even looked at from the low standpoint ofeducational value, such a performance as that given last Monday might beof the greatest service to modern culture; and who knows but a series ofthese productions might civilise South Kensington and give tone toBrompton?

Still it is something to have shown our artists 'a dream of form in daysof thought, ' and to have allowed the Philistines to peer into Paradise. And this is what Mr. Godwin has done. 

PLEASING AND PRATTLING

(Pall Mall Gazette, August 4, 1880. )

Sixty years ago, when Sir Walter Scott was inaugurating an era ofhistorical romance, The Wolfe of Badenoch was a very popular book. To usits interest is more archaeological than artistic, and its charactersseem merely puppets parading in fourteenth-century costume. It is trueour grandfathers thought differently. They liked novels in which theheroine exclaims, 'Peace with thine impudence, sir knave. Dost thou dareto speak thus in presence of the Lady Eleanore de Selby? . . . Agreybeard's ire shall never--, ' while the hero remarks that 'the welkinreddenes i' the west. ' In fact, they considered that language like thisis exceedingly picturesque and gives the necessary historicalperspective. Nowadays, however, few people have the time to read a novelthat requires a glossary to explain it, and we fear that without aglossary the general reader will hardly appreciate the value of suchexpressions as 'gnoffe, ' 'bowke, ' 'herborow, ' 'papelarde, ' 'couepe, ''rethes, ' 'pankers, ' 'agroted lorrel, ' and 'horrow tallow-catch, ' all ofwhich occur in the first few pages of The Wolfe of Badenoch. In a novelwe want life, not learning; and, unfortunately, Sir Thomas Lauder layshimself open to the criticism Jonson made on Spenser, that 'in affectingthe ancients he writ no language. ' Still, there is a healthy spirit ofadventure in the book, and no doubt many people will be interested to seethe kind of novel the public liked in 1825. 

Keep My Secret, by Miss G. M. Robins, is very different. It is quitemodern both in manner and in matter. The heroine, Miss Olga Damien, whenshe is a little girl tries to murder Mr. Victor Burnside. Mr. Burnside, who is tall, blue-eyed and amber-haired, makes her promise never tomention the subject to any one; this, in fact, is the secret that givesthe title to the book. The result is that Miss Damien is blackmailed bya fascinating and unscrupulous uncle and is nearly burnt to death in thesecret chamber of an old castle. The novel at the end gets toomelodramatic in character and the plot becomes a chaos of incoherentincidents, but the writing is clever and bright. It is just the book, infact, for a summer holiday, as it is never dull and yet makes no demandsat all upon the intellect. 

Mrs. Chetwynd gives us a new type of widow. As a rule, in fiction widowsare delightful, designing and deceitful; but Mrs. Dorriman is not by anymeans a Cleopatra in crape. She is a weak, retiring woman, very feebleand very feminine, and with the simplicity that is characteristic of suchsweet and shallow natures she allows her brother to defraud her of allher property. The widow is rather a bore and the brother is quite abear, but Margaret Rivers who, to save her sister from poverty, marries aman she does not love, is a cleverly conceived character, and Lady Lyonsis an admirable old dowager. The book can be read without any troubleand was probably written without any trouble also. The style isprattling and pleasing. 

The plot of Delamere is not very new. On the death of her husband, Mrs. De Ruthven discovers that the estates belong by right not to her sonRaymond but to her niece Fleurette. As she keeps her knowledge toherself, a series of complications follows, but the cousins areultimately united in marriage and the story ends happily. Mr. Curzonwrites in a clever style, and though its construction is rather clumsythe novel is a thoroughly interesting one. 

A Daughter of Fife tells us of the love of a young artist for a Scotchfisher-girl. The character sketches are exceptionally good, especiallythat of David Promoter, a fisherman who leaves his nets to preach thegospel, and the heroine is quite charming till she becomes civilised. Thebook is a most artistic combination of romantic feeling with realisticform, and it is pleasant to read descriptions of Scotch scenery that donot represent the land of mist and mountain as a sort of chromolithographfrom the Brompton Road. 

In Mr. Speight's novel, A Barren Title, we have an impoverished earl whoreceives an allowance from his relations on condition of his remainingsingle, being all the time secretly married and the father of a grown-upson. The story is improbable and amusing. 

On the whole, there is a great deal to be said for our ordinary Englishnovelists. They have all some story to tell, and most of them tell it inan interesting manner. Where they fail is in concentration of style. Their characters are far too eloquent and talk themselves to tatters. What we want is a little more reality and a little less rhetoric. We aremost grateful to them that they have not as yet accepted any frigidformula, nor stereotyped themselves into a school, but we wish that theywould talk less and think more. They lead us through a barren desert ofverbiage to a mirage that they call life; we wander aimlessly through avery wilderness of words in search of one touch of nature. However, oneshould not be too severe on English novels: they are the only relaxationof the intellectually unemployed. 

(1) The Wolfe of Badenoch: A Historical Romance of the FourteenthCentury. By Sir Thomas Lauder. (Hamilton, Adams and Co. )

(2) Keep My Secret. By G. M. Robins. (Bentley and Son. )

(3) Mrs. Dorriman. By the Hon. Mrs. Henry Chetwynd. (Chapman and Hall. )

(4) Delamere. By G. Curzon. (Sampson Low, Marston and Co. )

(5) A Daughter of Fife. By Amelia Barr. (James Clarke and Co. )

(6) A Barren Title. By T. W. Speight. (Chatto and Windus. )

BALZAC IN ENGLISH

(Pall Mall Gazette, September 13, 1886. )

Many years ago, in a number of All the Year Round, Charles Dickenscomplained that Balzac was very little read in England, and althoughsince then the public has become more familiar with the greatmasterpieces of French fiction, still it may be doubted whether theComedie Humaine is at all appreciated or understood by the general run ofnovel readers. It is really the greatest monument that literature hasproduced in our century, and M. Taine hardly exaggerates when he saysthat, after Shakespeare, Balzac is our most important magazine ofdocuments on human nature. Balzac's aim, in fact, was to do for humanitywhat Buffon had done for the animal creation. As the naturalist studiedlions and tigers, so the novelist studied men and women. Yet he was nomere reporter. Photography and proces-verbal were not the essentials ofhis method. Observation gave him the facts of life, but his geniusconverted facts into truths, and truths into truth. He was, in a word, amarvellous combination of the artistic temperament with the scientificspirit. The latter he bequeathed to his disciples; the former wasentirely his own. The distinction between such a book as M. Zola'sL'Assommoir and such a book as Balzac's Illusions Perdues is thedistinction between unimaginative realism and imaginative reality. 'AllBalzac's characters, ' said Baudelaire, 'are gifted with the same ardourof life that animated himself. All his fictions are as deeply colouredas dreams. Every mind is a weapon loaded to the muzzle with will. Thevery scullions have genius. ' He was, of course, accused of beingimmoral. Few writers who deal directly with life escape that charge. Hisanswer to the accusation was characteristic and conclusive. 'Whoevercontributes his stone to the edifice of ideas, ' he wrote, 'whoeverproclaims an abuse, whoever sets his mark upon an evil to be abolished, always passes for immoral. If you are true in your portraits, if, bydint of daily and nightly toil, you succeed in writing the most difficultlanguage in the world, the word immoral is thrown in your face. ' Themorals of the personages of the Comedie Humaine are simply the morals ofthe world around us. They are part of the artist's subject-matter; theyare not part of his method. If there be any need of censure it is tolife, not to literature, that it should be given. Balzac, besides, isessentially universal. He sees life from every point of view. He has nopreferences and no prejudices. He does not try to prove anything. Hefeels that the spectacle of life contains its own secret. 'II cree unmonde et se tait. '

And what a world it is! What a panorama of passions! What a pell-mellof men and women! It was said of Trollope that he increased the numberof our acquaintances without adding to our visiting list; but after theComedie Humaine one begins to believe that the only real people are thepeople who have never existed. Lucien de Rubempre, le Pere Goriot, Ursule Mirouet, Marguerite Claes, the Baron Hulot, Madame Marneffe, leCousin Pons, De Marsay--all bring with them a kind of contagious illusionof life. They have a fierce vitality about them: their existence isfervent and fiery-coloured; we not merely feel for them but we seethem--they dominate our fancy and defy scepticism. A steady course ofBalzac reduces our living friends to shadows, and our acquaintances tothe shadows of shades. Who would care to go out to an evening party tomeet Tomkins, the friend of one's boyhood, when one can sit at home withLucien de Rubempre? It is pleasanter to have the entree to Balzac'ssociety than to receive cards from all the duchesses in May fair. 

In spite of this, there are many people who have declared the ComedieHumaine to be indigestible. Perhaps it is: but then what about truffles?Balzac's publisher refused to be disturbed by any such criticism as that. 'Indigestible, is it?' he exclaimed with what, for a publisher, was raregood sense. 'Well, I should hope so; who ever thinks of a dinner thatisn't?' And our English publisher, Mr. Routledge, clearly agrees with M. Poulet-Malassis, as he is occupied in producing a complete translation ofthe Comedie Humaine. The two volumes that at present lie before uscontain Cesar Birotteau, that terrible tragedy of finance, and L'lllustreGaudissart, the apotheosis of the commercial traveller, the Duchesse deLangeais, most marvellous of modern love stories, Le Chef d'OEuvreInconnu, from which Mr. Henry James took his Madonna of the Future, andthat extraordinary romance Une Passion dans le Desert. The choice ofstories is quite excellent, but the translations are very unequal, andsome of them are positively bad. L'lllustre Gaudissart, for instance, isfull of the most grotesque mistakes, mistakes that would disgrace aschoolboy. 'Bon conseil vaut un oeil dans la main' is translated 'Goodadvice is an egg in the hand'! 'Ecus rebelles' is rendered 'rebelliouslucre, ' and such common expressions as 'faire la barbe, ' 'attendre lavente, ' 'n'entendre rien, ' palir sur une affaire, ' are all mistranslated. 'Des bois de quoi se faire un cure-dent' is not 'a few trees to sliceinto toothpicks, ' but 'as much timber as would make a toothpick'; 'sonhorloge enfermee dans une grande armoire oblongue' is not 'a clock whichhe kept shut up in a large oblong closet' but simply a clock in a tallclock-case; 'journal viager' is not 'an annuity, ' 'garce' is not the sameas 'farce, ' and 'dessins des Indes' are not 'drawings of the Indies. ' Onthe whole, nothing can be worse than this translation, and if Mr. Routledge wishes the public to read his version of the Comedie Humaine, he should engage translators who have some slight knowledge of French. 

Cesar Birotteau is better, though it is not by any means free frommistakes. 'To suffer under the Maximum' is an absurd rendering of 'subirle maximum'; 'perse' is 'chintz, ' not 'Persian chintz'; 'rendre le painbenit' is not 'to take the wafer'; 'riviere' is hardly a 'fillet ofdiamonds'; and to translate 'son coeur avait un calus a l'endroit duloyer' by 'his heart was a callus in the direction of a lease' is aninsult to two languages. On the whole, the best version is that of theDuchesse de Langeais, though even this leaves much to be desired. Such asentence as 'to imitate the rough logician who marched before thePyrrhonians while denying his own movement' entirely misses the point ofBalzac's 'imiter le rude logicien qui marchait devant les pyrrhoniens, qui niaient le mouvement. '

We fear Mr. Routledge's edition will not do. It is well printed andnicely bound; but his translators do not understand French. It is agreat pity, for La Comedie Humaine is one of the masterpieces of the age. 

Balzac's Novels in English. The Duchesse de Langeais and Other Stories;Cesar Birotteau. (Routledge and Sons. )

TWO NEW NOVELS

(Pall Mall Gazette, September 16, 1880. )

Most modern novels are more remarkable for their crime than for theirculture, and Mr. G. Manville Fenn's last venture is no exception to thegeneral rule. The Master of the Ceremonies is turbid, terrifying andthrilling. It contains, besides many 'moving accidents by flood andfield, ' an elopement, an abduction, a bigamous marriage, an attemptedassassination, a duel, a suicide, and a murder. The murder, we mustacknowledge, is a masterpiece. It would do credit to Gaboriau, andshould make Miss Braddon jealous. The Newgate Calendar itself containsnothing more fascinating, and what higher praise than this can be givento a sensational novel? Not that Lady Teigne, the hapless victim, iskilled in any very new or subtle manner. She is merely strangled in bed, like Desdemona; but the circumstances of the murder are so peculiar thatClaire Denville, in common with the reader, suspects her own father ofbeing guilty, while the father is convinced that the real criminal is hiseldest son. Stuart Denville himself, the Master of the Ceremonies, ismost powerfully drawn. He is a penniless, padded dandy who, by a carefulstudy of the 'grand style' in deportment, has succeeded in making himselfthe Brummel of the promenade and the autocrat of the Assembly Rooms. Alight comedian by profession, he is suddenly compelled to play theprincipal part in a tragedy. His shallow, trivial nature is forced intothe loftiest heroism, the noblest self-sacrifice. He becomes a heroagainst his will. The butterfly goes to martyrdom, the fop has to becomefine. Round this character centres, or rather should centre, thepsychological interest of the book, but unfortunately Mr. Fenn hasinsisted on crowding his story with unnecessary incident. He might havemade of his novel 'A Soul's Tragedy, ' but he has produced merely amelodrama in three volumes. The Master of the Ceremonies is a melancholyexample of the fatal influence of Drury Lane on literature. Still, itshould be read, for though Mr. Fenn has offered up his genius as aholocaust to Mr. Harris, he is never dull, and his style is on the wholevery good. We wish, however, that he would not try to give articulateform to inarticulate exclamations. Such a passage as this is quitedreadful and fails, besides, in producing the effect it aims at:

 'He--he--he, hi--hi--hi, hec--hec--hec, ha--ha--ha! ho--ho! Bless my--hey--ha! hey--ha! hugh--hugh--hugh! Oh dear me! Oh--why don't you--heck--heck--heck--heck--heck! shut the--ho--ho--ho--ho--hugh--hugh--window before I--ho--ho--ho--ho!'

This horrible jargon is supposed to convey the impression of a ladycoughing. It is, of course, a mere meaningless monstrosity on a par withspelling a sneeze. We hope that Mr. Fenn will not again try thesetheatrical tricks with language, for he possesses a rare art--the art oftelling a story well. 

A Statesman's Love, the author tells us in a rather mystical preface, waswritten 'to show that the alchemist-like transfiguration supposed to bewrought in our whole nature by that passion has no existence in fact, 'but it cannot be said to prove this remarkable doctrine. 

It is an exaggerated psychological study of a modern woman, a sort ofpicture by limelight, full of coarse colours and violent contrasts, notby any means devoid of cleverness but essentially false andover-emphasised. The heroine, Helen Rohan by name, tells her own storyand, as she takes three volumes to do it in, we weary of the one point ofview. Life to be intelligible should be approached from many sides, andvaluable though the permanent ego may be in philosophy, the permanent egoin fiction soon becomes a bore. There are, however, some interestingscenes in the novel, and a good portrait of the Young Pretender, forthough the heroine is absolutely a creation of the nineteenth century, the background of the story is historical and deals with the Rebellion of'45. As for the style, it is often original and picturesque; here andthere are strong individual touches and brilliant passages; but there isalso a good deal of pretence and a good deal of carelessness. 

What can be said, for instance, about such expressions as these, taken atrandom from the second volume, --'evanishing, ' 'solitary loneness, ' 'in my_then_ mood, ' 'the bees _might advantage_ by to-day, ' 'I would not listenreverently as _did the other some_ who went, ' 'entangling myself in thenet of this retiari, ' and why should Bassanio's beautiful speech in thetrial scene be deliberately attributed to Shylock? On the whole, AStatesman's Love cannot be said to be an artistic success; but still itshows promise and, some day, the author who, to judge by the style, isprobably a woman, may do good work. This, however, will require pruning, prudence and patience. We shall see. 

(1) The Master of the Ceremonies. By G. Manville Fenn. (Ward andDowney. )

(2) A Statesman's Love. By Emile Bauche. (Blackwood and Co. )

BEN JONSON

(Pall Mall Gazette, September 20, 1886. )

In selecting Mr. John Addington Symonds to write the life of Ben Jonsonfor his series of 'English Worthies, ' Mr. Lang, no doubt, exercised awise judgment. Mr. Symonds, like the author of Volpone, is a scholar anda man of letters; his book on Shakspeare's Predecessors showed amarvellous knowledge of the Elizabethan period, and he is a recognisedauthority on the Italian Renaissance. The last is not the least of hisqualifications. Without a full appreciation of the meaning of theHumanistic movement it is impossible to understand the great strugglebetween the Classical form and the Romantic spirit which is the chiefcritical characteristic of the golden age of the English drama, an agewhen Shakespeare found his chief adversary, not among his contemporaries, but in Seneca, and when Jonson armed himself with Aristotle to win thesuffrages of a London audience. Mr. Symonds' book, consequently, will beopened with interest. It does not, of course, contain much that is newabout Jonson's life. But the facts of Jonson's life are already wellknown, and in books of this kind what is true is of more importance thanwhat is new, appreciation more valuable than discovery. Scotchmen, however, will, no doubt, be interested to find that Mr. Symonds hassucceeded in identifying Jonson's crest with that of the Johnstones ofAnnandale, and the story of the way the literary Titan escaped fromhanging, by proving that he could read, is graphically told. 

On the whole, we have a vivid picture of the man as he lived. Wherepicturesqueness is required, Mr. Symonds is always good. The usualcomparison with Dr. Johnson is, of course, brought out. Few of 'RareBen's' biographers spare us that, and the point is possibly a natural oneto make. But when Mr. Symonds calls upon us to notice that both men madea journey to Scotland, and that 'each found in a Scotchman hisbiographer, ' the parallel loses all value. There is an M in Monmouth andan M in Macedon, and Drummond of Hawthornden and Boswell of Auchinleckwere both born the other side of the Tweed; but from such analogiesnothing is to be learned. There is no surer way of destroying asimilarity than to strain it. 

As for Mr. Symonds' estimate of Jonson's genius, it is in many pointsquite excellent. He ranks him with the giants rather than with the gods, with those who compel our admiration by their untiring energy and hugestrength of intellectual muscle, not with those 'who share the divinegifts of creative imagination and inevitable instinct. ' Here he isright. Pelion more than Parnassus was Jonson's home. His art has toomuch effort about it, too much definite intention. His style lacks thecharm of chance. Mr. Symonds is right also in the stress he lays on theextraordinary combination in Jonson's work of the most concentratedrealism with encyclopaedic erudition. In Jonson's comedies London slangand learned scholarship go hand in hand. Literature was as living athing to him as life itself. He used his classical lore not merely togive form to his verse, but to give flesh and blood to the persons of hisplays. He could build up a breathing creature out of quotations. Hemade the poets of Greece and Rome terribly modern, and introduced them tothe oddest company. His very culture is an element in his coarseness. There are moments when one is tempted to liken him to a beast that hasfed off books. 

We cannot, however, agree with Mr. Symonds when he says that Jonson'rarely touched more than the outside of character, ' that his men andwomen are 'the incarnations of abstract properties rather than livinghuman beings, ' that they are in fact mere 'masqueraders and mechanicalpuppets. ' Eloquence is a beautiful thing but rhetoric ruins many acritic, and Mr. Symonds is essentially rhetorical. When, for instance, he tells us that 'Jonson made masks, ' while 'Dekker and Heywood createdsouls, ' we feel that he is asking us to accept a crude judgment for thesake of a smart antithesis. It is, of course, true that we do not findin Jonson the same growth of character that we find in Shakespeare, andwe may admit that most of the characters in Jonson's plays are, so tospeak, ready-made. But a ready-made character is not necessarily eithermechanical or wooden, two epithets Mr. Symonds uses constantly in hiscriticism. 

We cannot tell, and Shakespeare himself does not tell us, why Iago isevil, why Regan and Goneril have hard hearts, or why Sir Andrew Aguecheekis a fool. It is sufficient that they are what they are, and that naturegives warrant for their existence. If a character in a play is lifelike, if we recognise it as true to nature, we have no right to insist on theauthor explaining its genesis to us. We must accept it as it is: and inthe hands of a good dramatist mere presentation can take the place ofanalysis, and indeed is often a more dramatic method, because a moredirect one. And Jonson's characters are true to nature. They are in nosense abstractions; they are types. Captain Bobadil and Captain Tucca, Sir John Daw and Sir Amorous La Foole, Volpone and Mosca, Subtle and SirEpicure Mammon, Mrs. Purecraft and the Rabbi Busy are all creatures offlesh and blood, none the less lifelike because they are labelled. Inthis point Mr. Symonds seems to us unjust towards Jonson. 

We think, also, that a special chapter might have been devoted to Jonsonas a literary critic. The creative activity of the English Renaissanceis so great that its achievements in the sphere of criticism are oftenoverlooked by the student. Then, for the first time, was languagetreated as an art. The laws of expression and composition wereinvestigated and formularised. The importance of words was recognised. Romanticism, Realism and Classicism fought their first battles. Thedramatists are full of literary and art criticisms, and amused the publicwith slashing articles on one another in the form of plays. 

Mr. Symonds, of course, deals with Jonson in his capacity as a critic, and always with just appreciation, but the whole subject is one thatdeserves fuller and more special treatment. 

Some small inaccuracies, too, should be corrected in the second edition. Dryden, for instance, was not 'Jonson's successor on the laureate'sthrone, ' as Mr. Symonds eloquently puts it, for Sir William Davenant camebetween them, and when one remembers the predominance of rhyme inShakespeare's early plays, it is too much to say that 'after theproduction of the first part of Tamburlaine blank verse became theregular dramatic metre of the public stage. ' Shakespeare did not acceptblank verse at once as a gift from Marlowe's hand, but himself arrived atit after a long course of experiments in rhyme. Indeed, some of Mr. Symonds' remarks on Marlowe are very curious. To say of his Edward II. , for instance, that it 'is not at all inferior to the work ofShakespeare's younger age, ' is very niggardly and inadequate praise, andcomes strangely from one who has elsewhere written with such appreciationof Marlowe's great genius; while to call Marlowe Jonson's 'master' is tomake for him an impossible claim. In comedy Marlowe has nothing whateverto teach Jonson; in tragedy Jonson sought for the classical not theromantic form. 

As for Mr. Symonds' style, it is, as usual, very fluent, very picturesqueand very full of colour. Here and there, however, it is reallyirritating. Such a sentence as 'the tavern had the defects of itsquality' is an awkward Gallicism; and when Mr. Symonds, after geniallycomparing Jonson's blank verse to the front of Whitehall (a comparison, by the way, that would have enraged the poet beyond measure) proceeds toplay a fantastic aria on the same string, and tells us that 'Massingerreminds us of the intricacies of Sansovino, Shakespeare of Gothic aislesor heaven's cathedral . . . Ford of glittering Corinthian colonnades, Webster of vaulted crypts, . . . Marlowe of masoned clouds, and Marston, in his better moments, of the fragmentary vigour of a Roman ruin, ' onebegins to regret that any one ever thought of the unity of the arts. Similes such as these obscure; they do not illumine. To say that Ford islike a glittering Corinthian colonnade adds nothing to our knowledge ofeither Ford or Greek architecture. Mr. Symonds has written some charmingpoetry, but his prose, unfortunately, is always poetical prose, never theprose of a poet. Still, the volume is worth reading, though decidedlyMr. Symonds, to use one of his own phrases, has 'the defects of hisquality. '

'English Worthies. ' Edited by Andrew Lang. Ben Jonson. By JohnAddington Symonds. (Longmans, Green and Co. )

THE POETS' CORNER--I

(Pall Mall Gazette, September 27, 1886. )

Among the social problems of the nineteenth century the tramp has alwaysheld an important position, but his appearance among thenineteenth-century poets is extremely remarkable. Not that a tramp'smode of life is at all unsuited to the development of the poetic faculty. Far from it! He, if any one, should possess that freedom of mood whichis so essential to the artist, for he has no taxes to pay and norelations to worry him. The man who possesses a permanent address, andwhose name is to be found in the Directory, is necessarily limited andlocalised. Only the tramp has absolute liberty of living. Was not Homerhimself a vagrant, and did not Thespis go about in a caravan? It is thenwith feelings of intense expectation that we open the little volume thatlies before us. It is entitled Low Down, by Two Tramps, and ismarvellous even to look at. It is clear that art has at last reached thecriminal classes. The cover is of brown paper like the covers of Mr. Whistler's brochures. The printing exhibits every fantastic variation oftype, and the pages range in colour from blue to brown, from grey to sagegreen and from rose pink to chrome yellow. The Philistines may sneer atthis chromatic chaos, but we do not. As the painters are alwayspilfering from the poets, why should not the poet annex the domain of thepainter and use colour for the expression of his moods and music: bluefor sentiment, and red for passion, grey for cultured melancholy, andgreen for descriptions? The book, then, is a kind of miniature rainbow, and with all its varied sheets is as lovely as an advertisement hoarding. As for the peripatetics--alas! they are not nightingales. Their note isharsh and rugged, Mr. G. R. Sims is the god of their idolatry, theirstyle is the style of the Surrey Theatre, and we are sorry to see thatthat disregard of the rights of property which always characterises theable-bodied vagrant is extended by our tramps from the defensiblepilfering from hen-roosts to the indefensible pilfering from poets. Whenwe read such lines as:

 And builded him a pyramid, four square, Open to all the sky and every wind, we feel that bad as poultry-snatching is, plagiarism is worse. Facilisdescensus Averno! From highway robbery and crimes of violence one sinksgradually to literary petty larceny. However, there are coarselyeffective poems in the volume, such as A Super's Philosophy, DickHewlett, a ballad of the Californian school, and Gentleman Bill; andthere is one rather pretty poem called The Return of Spring:

 When robins hop on naked boughs, And swell their throats with song, When lab'rers trudge behind their ploughs, And blithely whistle their teams along;

 When glints of summer sunshine chase Park shadows on the distant hills, And scented tufts of pansies grace Moist grots that 'scape rude Borean chills. 

The last line is very disappointing. No poet, nowadays, should write of'rude Boreas'; he might just as well call the dawn 'Aurora, ' or say that'Flora decks the enamelled meads. ' But there are some nice touches inthe poem, and it is pleasant to find that tramps have their harmlessmoments. On the whole, the volume, if it is not quite worth reading, isat least worth looking at. The fool's motley in which it is arrayed isextremely curious and extremely characteristic. 

Mr. Irwin's muse comes to us more simply clad, and more gracefully. Shegains her colour-effect from the poet, not from the publisher. Nocockneyism or colloquialism mars the sweetness of her speech. She findsmusic for every mood, and form for every feeling. In art as in life thelaw of heredity holds good. On est toujours fits de quelqu'un. And soit is easy to see that Mr. Irwin is a fervent admirer of Mr. MatthewArnold. But he is in no sense a plagiarist. He has succeeded instudying a fine poet without stealing from him--a very difficult thing todo--and though many of the reeds through which he blows have been touchedby other lips, yet he is able to draw new music from them. Like most ofour younger poets, Mr. Irwin is at his best in his sonnets, and thoseentitled The Seeker after God and The Pillar of the Empire are reallyremarkable. All through this volume, however, one comes across goodwork, and the descriptions of Indian scenery are excellent. India, infact, is the picturesque background to these poems, and her monstrousbeasts, strange flowers and fantastic birds are used with much subtletyfor the production of artistic effect. Perhaps there is a little toomuch about the pipal-tree, but when we have a proper sense of Imperialunity, no doubt the pipal-tree will be as dear and as familiar to us asthe oaks and elms of our own woodlands. 

(1) Low Down: Wayside Thoughts in Ballad and Other Verse. By Two Tramps. (Redway. )

(2) Rhymes and Renderings. By H. C. Irwin. (David Stott. )

A RIDE THROUGH MOROCCO

(Pall Mall Gazette, October 8, 1886. )

Morocco is a sort of paradox among countries, for though it lies westwardof Piccadilly yet it is purely Oriental in character, and though it isbut three hours' sail from Europe yet it makes you feel (to use theforcible expression of an American writer) as if you had been 'taken upby the scruff of the neck and set down in the Old Testament. ' Mr. HughStutfield has ridden twelve hundred miles through it, penetrated to Fezand Wazan, seen the lovely gate at Mequinez and the Hassen Tower byRabat, feasted with sheikhs and fought with robbers, lived in anatmosphere of Moors, mosques and mirages, visited the city of the lepersand the slave-market of Sus, and played loo under the shadow of the AtlasMountains. He is not an Herodotus nor a Sir John Mandeville, but hetells his stories very pleasantly. His book, on the whole, is delightfulreading, for though Morocco is picturesque he does not weary us with word-painting; though it is poor he does not bore us with platitudes. Now andthen he indulges in a traveller's licence and thrills the simple readerwith statements as amazing as they are amusing. The Moorish coinage, hetells us, is so cumbersome that if a man gives you change forhalf-a-crown you have to hire a donkey to carry it away; the Moorishlanguage is so guttural that no one can ever hope to pronounce it arightwho has not been brought up within hearing of the grunting of camels, asteady course of sneezing being, consequently, the only way by which aEuropean can acquire anything like the proper accent; the Sultan does notknow how much he is married, but he unquestionably is so to a very largeextent: on the principle that you cannot have too much of a good thing awoman is valued in proportion to her stoutness, and so far from therebeing any reduction made in the marriage-market for taking a quantity, you must pay so much per pound; the Arabs believe the Shereef of Wazan tobe such a holy man that, if he is guilty of taking champagne, theforbidden wine is turned into milk as he quaffs it, and if he getsextremely drunk he is merely in a mystical trance. 

Mr. Stutfield, however, has his serious moments, and his account of thecommerce, government and social life of the Moors is extremelyinteresting. It must be confessed that the picture he draws is in manyrespects a very tragic one. The Moors are the masters of a beautifulcountry and of many beautiful arts, but they are paralysed by theirfatalism and pillaged by their rulers. Few races, indeed, have had amore terrible fall than these Moors. Of the great intellectualcivilisation of the Arabs no trace remains. The names of Averroes andAlmaimon, of Al Abbas and Ben Husa are quite unknown. Fez, once theAthens of Africa, the cradle of the sciences, is now a mere commercialcaravansary. Its universities have vanished, its library is almostempty. Freedom of thought has been killed by the Koran, freedom ofliving by bad government. But Mr. Stutfield is not without hopes for thefuture. So far from agreeing with Lord Salisbury that 'Morocco may goher own way, ' he strongly supports Captain Warren's proposition that weshould give up Gibraltar to Spain in exchange for Ceuta, and therebyprevent the Mediterranean from becoming a French lake, and give England anew granary for corn. The Moorish Empire, he warns us, is rapidlybreaking up, and if in the 'general scramble for Africa' that has alreadybegun, the French gain possession of Morocco, he points out that oursupremacy over the Straits will be lost. Whatever may be thought of Mr. Stutfield's political views, and his suggestions for 'multiple control'and 'collective European action, ' there is no doubt that in MoroccoEngland has interests to defend and a mission to pursue, and this part ofthe book should be carefully studied. As for the general reader who, wefear, is not as a rule interested in the question of 'multiple control, 'if he is a sportsman, he will find in El Magreb a capital account of pig-sticking; if he is artistic, he will be delighted to know that theimportation of magenta into Morocco is strictly prohibited; if criminaljurisprudence has any charms for him, he can examine a code that punishesslander by rubbing cayenne pepper into the lips of the offender; and ifhe is merely lazy, he can take a pleasant ride of twelve hundred miles inMr. Stutfield's company without stirring out of his armchair. 

El Magreb: Twelve Hundred Miles' Ride through Morocco. By HughStutfield. (Sampson Low, Marston and Co. )

THE CHILDREN OF THE POETS

(Pall Mall Gazette, October 14, 1886. )

The idea of this book is exceedingly charming. As children themselvesare the perfect flowers of life, so a collection of the best poemswritten on children should be the most perfect of all anthologies. Yet, the book itself is not by any means a success. Many of the loveliestchild-poems in our literature are excluded and not a few feeble andtrivial poems are inserted. The editor's work is characterised by sinsof omission and of commission, and the collection, consequently, is veryincomplete and very unsatisfactory. Andrew Marvell's exquisite poem ThePicture of Little T. C. , for instance, does not appear in Mr. Robertson'svolume, nor the Young Love of the same author, nor the beautiful elegyBen Jonson wrote on the death of Salathiel Pavy, the little boy-actor ofhis plays. Waller's verses also, To My Young Lady Lucy Sidney, deserve aplace in an anthology of this kind, and so do Mr. Matthew Arnold's linesTo a Gipsy Child, and Edgar Allan Poe's Annabel Lee, a little lyric fullof strange music and strange romance. There is possibly much to be saidin favour of such a poem as that which ends with

 And I thank my God with falling tears For the things in the bottom drawer:

but how different it is from

 _I_ was a child, and _she_ was a child, In this kingdom by the sea; But we loved with a love that was more than love-- I and my Annabel Lee; With a love that the winged Seraphs of Heaven Coveted her and me

The selection from Blake, again, is very incomplete, many of theloveliest poems being excluded, such as those on The Little Girl Lost andThe Little Girl Found, the Cradle Song, Infant Joy, and others; nor canwe find Sir Henry Wotton's Hymn upon the Birth of Prince Charles, SirWilliam Jones's dainty four-line epigram on The Babe, or the delightfullines To T. L. H. , A Child, by Charles Lamb. 

The gravest omission, however, is certainly that of Herrick. Not asingle poem of his appears in Mr. Robertson's collection. And yet noEnglish poet has written of children with more love and grace anddelicacy. His Ode on the Birth of Our Saviour, his poem To His Saviour, A Child: A Present by a Child, his Graces for Children, and his manylovely epitaphs on children are all of them exquisite works of art, simple, sweet and sincere. 

An English anthology of child-poems that excludes Herrick is as anEnglish garden without its roses and an English woodland without itssinging birds; and for one verse of Herrick we would gladly give inexchange even those long poems by Mr. Ashby-Sterry, Miss Menella Smedley, and Mr. Lewis Morris (of Penrhyn), to which Mr. Robertson has assigned aplace in his collection. Mr. Robertson, also, should take care when hepublishes a poem to publish it correctly. Mr. Bret Harte's Dickens inCamp, for instance, is completely spoiled by two ridiculous misprints. Inthe first line 'dimpling' is substituted for 'drifting' to the entireruin of rhyme and reason, and in the ninth verse 'the _pensive glory_that fills the Kentish hills' appears as 'the Persian glory . . . ' with alarge capital P! Mistakes such as these are quite unpardonable, and makeone feel that, perhaps, after all it was fortunate for Herrick that hewas left out. A poet can survive everything but a misprint. 

As for Mr. Robertson's preface, like most of the prefaces in theCanterbury Series, it is very carelessly written. Such a sentence as 'I. . . Believe that Mrs. Piatt's poems, in particular, will come to manyreaders, fresh, as well as delightful contributions from across theocean, ' is painful to read. Nor is the matter much better than themanner. It is fantastic to say that Raphael's pictures of the Madonnaand Child dealt a deadly blow to the monastic life, and to say, withreference to Greek art, that 'Cupid by the side of Venus enables us toforget that most of her sighs are wanton' is a very crude bit of artcriticism indeed. Wordsworth, again, should hardly be spoken of as onewho 'was not, in the general, a man from whom human sympathies welledprofusely, ' but this criticism is as nothing compared to the passagewhere Mr. Robertson tells us that the scene between Arthur and Hubert inKing John is not true to nature because the child's pleadings for hislife are playful as well as piteous. Indeed, Mr. Robertson, forgettingMamillius as completely as he misunderstands Arthur, states very clearlythat Shakespeare has not given us any deep readings of child nature. Paradoxes are always charming, but judgments such as these are notparadoxical; they are merely provincial. 

On the whole, Mr. Robertson's book will not do. It is, we fully admit, an industrious compilation, but it is not an anthology, it is not aselection of the best, for it lacks the discrimination and good tastewhich is the essence of selection, and for the want of which no amount ofindustry can atone. The child-poems of our literature have still to beedited. 

The Children of the Poets: An Anthology from English and American Writersof Three Generations. Edited, with an Introduction, by Eric S. Robertson. (Walter Scott. )

NEW NOVELS

(Pall Mall Gazette, October 28, 1886. )

Astray: A Tale of a Country Town, is a very serious volume. It has takenfour people to write it, and even to read it requires assistance. Itsdulness is premeditated and deliberate and comes from a laudable desireto rescue fiction from flippancy. It is, in fact, tedious from thenoblest motives and wearisome through its good intentions. Yet the storyitself is not an uninteresting one. Quite the contrary. It deals withthe attempt of a young doctor to build up a noble manhood on the ruins ofa wasted youth. Burton King, while little more than a reckless lad, forges the name of a dying man, is arrested and sent to penal servitudefor seven years. On his discharge he comes to live with his sisters in alittle country town and finds that his real punishment begins when he isfree, for prison has made him a pariah. Still, through the nobility andself-sacrifice of his life, he gradually wins himself a position, andultimately marries the prettiest girl in the book. His character is, onthe whole, well drawn, and the authors have almost succeeded in makinghim good without making him priggish. The method, however, by which thestory is told is extremely tiresome. It consists of an interminableseries of long letters by different people and of extracts from variousdiaries. The book consequently is piecemeal and unsatisfactory. Itfails in producing any unity of effect. It contains the rough materialfor a story, but is not a completed work of art. It is, in fact, more ofa notebook than a novel. We fear that too many collaborators are liketoo many cooks and spoil the dinner. Still, in this tale of a countrytown there are certain solid qualities, and it is a book that one canwith perfect safety recommend to other people. 

Miss Rhoda Broughton belongs to a very different school. No one can eversay of her that she has tried to separate flippancy from fiction, andwhatever harsh criticisms may be passed on the construction of hersentences, she at least possesses that one touch of vulgarity that makesthe whole world kin. We are sorry, however, to see from a perusal ofBetty's Visions that Miss Broughton has been attending the meetings ofthe Psychical Society in search of copy. Mysticism is not her mission, and telepathy should be left to Messrs. Myers and Gurney. In Philistialies Miss Broughton's true sphere, and to Philistia she should return. She knows more about the vanities of this world than about this world'svisions, and a possible garrison town is better than an impossible ghost-land. 

That Other Person, who gives Mrs. Alfred Hunt the title for her three-volume novel, is a young girl, by name Hester Langdale, who for the sakeof Mr. Godfrey Daylesford sacrifices everything a woman can sacrifice, and, on his marrying some one else, becomes a hospital nurse. Thehospital nurse idea is perhaps used by novelists a little too often incases of this kind; still, it has an artistic as well as an ethicalvalue. The interest of the story centres, however, in Mr. Daylesford, who marries not for love but for ambition, and is rather severelypunished for doing so. Mrs. Daylesford has a sister called Polly whodevelops, according to the approved psychological method, from ahobbledehoy girl into a tender sweet woman. Polly is delightfully drawn, but the most attractive character in the book, strangely enough, is Mr. Godfrey Daylesford. He is very weak, but he is very charming. Socharming indeed is he, that it is only when one closes the book that onethinks of censuring him. While we are in direct contact with him we arefascinated. Such a character has at any rate the morality of truth aboutit. Here literature has faithfully followed life. Mrs. Hunt writes avery pleasing style, bright and free from affectation. Indeed, everything in her work is clever except the title. 

A Child of the Revolution is by the accomplished authoress of the Atelierdu Lys. The scene opens in France in 1793, and the plot is extremelyingenious. The wife of Jacques Vaudes, a Lyons deputy, loses by illnessher baby girl while her husband is absent in Paris where he has gone tosee Danton. At the instigation of an old priest she adopts a child ofthe same age, a little orphan of noble birth, whose parents have died inthe Reign of Terror, and passes it off as her own. Her husband, a sternand ardent Republican, worships the child with a passion like that ofJean Valjean for Cosette, nor is it till she has grown to perfectwomanhood that he discovers that he has given his love to the daughter ofhis enemy. This is a noble story, but the workmanship, though good ofits kind, is hardly adequate to the idea. The style lacks grace, movement and variety. It is correct but monotonous. Seriousness, likeproperty, has its duties as well as its rights, and the first duty of anovel is to please. A Child of the Revolution hardly does that. Stillit has merits. 

Aphrodite is a romance of ancient Hellas. The supposed date, as given inthe first line of Miss Safford's admirable translation, is 551 B. C. This, however, is probably a misprint. At least, we cannot believe that socareful an archaeologist as Ernst Eckstein would talk of a famous schoolof sculpture existing at Athens in the sixth century, and the wholecharacter of the civilisation is of a much later date. The book may bedescribed as a new setting of the tale of Acontius and Cydippe, andthough Eckstein is a sort of literary Tadema and cares more for hisbackgrounds than he does for his figures, still he can tell a story verywell, and his hero is made of flesh and blood. As regards the style, theGermans have not the same feeling as we have about technicalities inliterature. To our ears such words as 'phoreion, ' 'secos, ' 'oionistes, ''Thyrides' and the like sound harshly in a novel and give an air ofpedantry, not of picturesqueness. Yet in its tone Aphrodite reminds usof the late Greek novels. Indeed, it might be one of the lost tales ofMiletus. It deserves to have many readers and a better binding. 

(1) Astray: A Tale of a Country Town. By Charlotte M. Yonge, MaryBramston, Christabel Coleridge and Esme Stuart. (Hatchards. )

(2) Betty's Visions. By Rhoda Broughton. (Routledge and Sons. )

(3) That Other Person. By Mrs. Alfred Hunt. (Chatto and Windus. )

(4) A Child of the Revolution. By the Author of Mademoiselle Mori. (Hatchards. )

(5) Aphrodite. Translated from the German of Ernst Eckstein by Mary J. Safford. (New York: Williams and Gottsberger; London: Trubner and Co. )

A POLITICIAN'S POETRY

(Pall Mall Gazette, November 3, 1886. )

Although it is against etiquette to quote Greek in Parliament, Homer hasalways been a great favourite with our statesmen and, indeed, may be saidto be almost a factor in our political life. For as the cross-benchesform a refuge for those who have no minds to make up, so those who cannotmake up their minds always take to Homeric studies. Many of our leadershave sulked in their tents with Achilles after some violent politicalcrisis and, enraged at the fickleness of fortune, more than one has givenup to poetry what was obviously meant for party. It would be unjust, however, to regard Lord Carnarvon's translation of the Odyssey as beingin any sense a political manifesto. Between Calypso and the coloniesthere is no connection, and the search for Penelope has nothing to dowith the search for a policy. The love of literature alone has producedthis version of the marvellous Greek epic, and to the love of literaturealone it appeals. As Lord Carnarvon says very truly in his preface, eachgeneration in turn delights to tell the story of Odysseus in its ownlanguage, for the story is one that never grows old. 

Of the labours of his predecessors in translation Lord Carnarvon makesample recognition, though we acknowledge that we do not consider Pope'sHomer 'the work of a great poet, ' and we must protest that there is morein Chapman than 'quaint Elizabethan conceits. ' The metre he has selectedis blank verse, which he regards as the best compromise between 'theinevitable redundancy of rhyme and the stricter accuracy of prose. ' Thischoice is, on the whole, a sensible one. Blank verse undoubtedly givesthe possibility of a clear and simple rendering of the original. Uponthe other hand, though we may get Homer's meaning, we often miss hismusic. The ten-syllabled line brings but a faint echo of the long rollof the Homeric hexameter, its rapid movement and continuous harmony. Besides, except in the hands of a great master of song, blank verse isapt to be tedious, and Lord Carnarvon's use of the weak ending, his habitof closing the line with an unimportant word, is hardly consistent withthe stateliness of an epic, however valuable it might be in dramaticverse. Now and then, also, Lord Carnarvon exaggerates the value of theHomeric adjective, and for one word in the Greek gives us a whole line inthe English. The simple [Greek text], for instance, is converted into'And when the shades of evening fall around, ' in the second book, andelsewhere purely decorative epithets are expanded into elaboratedescriptions. However, there are many pleasing qualities in LordCarnarvon's verse, and though it may not contain much subtlety of melody, still it has often a charm and sweetness of its own. 

The description of Calypso's garden, for example, is excellent:

 Around the grotto grew a goodly grove, Alder, and poplar, and the cypress sweet; And the deep-winged sea-birds found their haunt, And owls and hawks, and long-tongued cormorants, Who joy to live upon the briny flood. And o'er the face of the deep cave a vine Wove its wild tangles and clustering grapes. Four fountains too, each from the other turned, Poured their white waters, whilst the grassy meads Bloomed with the parsley and the violet's flower. 

The story of the Cyclops is not very well told. The grotesque humour ofthe Giant's promise hardly appears in

 Thee then, Noman, last of all Will I devour, and this thy gift shall be, and the bitter play on words Odysseus makes, the pun on [Greek text], infact, is not noticed. The idyll of Nausicaa, however, is very gracefullytranslated, and there is a great deal that is delightful in the Circeepisode. For simplicity of diction this is also very good:

 So to Olympus through the woody isle Hermes departed, and I went my way To Circe's halls, sore troubled in my mind. But by the fair-tressed Goddess' gate I stood, And called upon her, and she heard my voice, And forth she came and oped the shining doors And bade me in; and sad at heart I went. Then did she set me on a stately chair, Studded with silver nails of cunning work, With footstool for my feet, and mixed a draught Of her foul witcheries in golden cup, For evil was her purpose. From her hand I took the cup and drained it to the dregs, Nor felt the magic charm; but with her rod She smote me, and she said, 'Go, get thee hence And herd thee with thy fellows in the stye. ' So spake she, and straightway I drew my sword Upon the witch, and threatened her with death. 

Lord Carnarvon, on the whole, has given us a very pleasing version of thefirst half of the Odyssey. His translation is done in a scholarly andcareful manner and deserves much praise. It is not quite Homer, ofcourse, but no translation can hope to be that, for no work of art canafford to lose its style or to give up the manner that is essential toit. Still, those who cannot read Greek will find much beauty in it, andthose who can will often gain a charming reminiscence. 

The Odyssey of Homer. Books I. -XII. Translated into English Verse bythe Earl of Carnarvon. (Macmillan and Co. )

MR. SYMONDS' HISTORY OF THE RENAISSANCE

(Pall Mall Gazette, November 10, 1886. )

Mr. Symonds has at last finished his history of the Italian Renaissance. The two volumes just published deal with the intellectual and moralconditions in Italy during the seventy years of the sixteenth centurywhich followed the coronation of Charles the Fifth at Bologna, an era towhich Mr. Symonds gives the name of the Catholic Reaction, and theycontain a most interesting and valuable account of the position of Spainin the Italian peninsula, the conduct of the Tridentine Council, thespecific organisation of the Holy Office and the Company of Jesus, andthe state of society upon which those forces were brought to bear. Inhis previous volumes Mr. Symonds had regarded the past rather as apicture to be painted than as a problem to be solved. In these two lastvolumes, however, he shows a clearer appreciation of the office ofhistory. The art of the picturesque chronicler is completed by somethinglike the science of the true historian, the critical spirit begins tomanifest itself, and life is not treated as a mere spectacle, but thelaws of its evolution and progress are investigated also. We admit thatthe desire to represent life at all costs under dramatic conditions stillaccompanies Mr. Symonds, and that he hardly realises that what seemsromance to us was harsh reality to those who were engaged in it. Likemost dramatists, also, he is more interested in the psychologicalexceptions than in the general rule. He has something of Shakespeare'ssovereign contempt of the masses. The people stir him very little, buthe is fascinated by great personalities. Yet it is only fair to rememberthat the age itself was one of exaggerated individualism and thatliterature had not yet become a mouthpiece for the utterances ofhumanity. Men appreciated the aristocracy of intellect, but with thedemocracy of suffering they had no sympathy. The cry from thebrickfields had still to be heard. Mr. Symonds' style, too, has muchimproved. Here and there, it is true, we come across traces of the oldmanner, as in the apocalyptic vision of the seven devils that enteredItaly with the Spaniard, and the description of the Inquisition as aBelial-Moloch, a 'hideous idol whose face was blackened with soot fromburning human flesh. ' Such a sentence, also, as 'over the Dead Sea ofsocial putrefaction floated the sickening oil of Jesuitical hypocrisy, 'reminds us that rhetoric has not yet lost its charms for Mr. Symonds. Still, on the whole, the style shows far more reserve, balance andsobriety, than can be found in the earlier volumes where violentantithesis forms the predominant characteristic, and accuracy is oftensacrificed to an adjective. 

Amongst the most interesting chapters of the book are those on theInquisition, on Sarpi, the great champion of the severance of Church fromState, and on Giordano Bruno. Indeed the story of Bruno's life, from hisvisit to London and Oxford, his sojourn in Paris and wanderings throughGermany, down to his betrayal at Venice and martyrdom at Rome, is mostpowerfully told, and the estimate of the value of his philosophy and therelation he holds to modern science, is at once just and appreciative. The account also of Ignatius Loyola and the rise of the Society of Jesusis extremely interesting, though we cannot think that Mr. Symonds is veryhappy in his comparison of the Jesuits to 'fanatics laying stones upon arailway' or 'dynamiters blowing up an emperor or a corner of WestminsterHall. ' Such a judgment is harsh and crude in expression and moresuitable to the clamour of the Protestant Union than to the dignity ofthe true historian. Mr. Symonds, however, is rarely deliberately unfair, and there is no doubt but that his work on the Catholic Reaction is amost valuable contribution to modern history--so valuable, indeed, thatin the account he gives of the Inquisition in Venice it would be wellworth his while to bring the picturesque fiction of the text into someharmony with the plain facts of the footnote. 

On the poetry of the sixteenth century Mr. Symonds has, of course, agreat deal to say, and on such subjects he always writes with ease, grace, and delicacy of perception. We admit that we weary sometimes ofthe continual application to literature of epithets appropriate toplastic and pictorial art. The conception of the unity of the arts iscertainly of great value, but in the present condition of criticism itseems to us that it would be more useful to emphasise the fact that eachart has its separate method of expression. The essay on Tasso, however, is delightful reading, and the position the poet holds towards modernmusic and modern sentiment is analysed with much subtlety. The essay onMarino also is full of interest. We have often wondered whether thosewho talk so glibly of Euphuism and Marinism in literature have ever readeither Euphues or the Adone. To the latter they can have no better guidethan Mr. Symonds, whose description of the poem is most fascinating. Marino, like many greater men, has suffered much from his disciples, buthe himself was a master of graceful fancy and of exquisite felicity ofphrase; not, of course, a great poet but certainly an artist in poetryand one to whom language is indebted. Even those conceits that Mr. Symonds feels bound to censure have something charming about them. Thecontinual use of periphrases is undoubtedly a grave fault in style, yetwho but a pedant would really quarrel with such periphrases as sirena de'boschi for the nightingale, or il novella Edimione for Galileo?

From the poets Mr. Symonds passes to the painters: not those greatartists of Florence and Venice of whom he has already written, but theEclectics of Bologna, the Naturalists of Naples and Rome. This chapteris too polemical to be pleasant. The one on music is much better, andMr. Symonds gives us a most interesting description of the gradual stepsby which the Italian genius passed from poetry and painting to melody andsong, till the whole of Europe thrilled with the marvel and mystery ofthis new language of the soul. Some small details should perhaps benoticed. It is hardly accurate, for instance, to say that Monteverde'sOrfeo was the first form of the recitative-Opera, as Peri's Dafne andEuridice and Cavaliere's Rappresentazione preceded it by some years, andit is somewhat exaggerated to say that 'under the regime of theCommonwealth the national growth of English music received a check fromwhich it never afterwards recovered, ' as it was with Cromwell's auspicesthat the first English Opera was produced, thirteen years before anyOpera was regularly established in Paris. The fact that England did notmake such development in music as Italy and Germany did, must be ascribedto other causes than 'the prevalence of Puritan opinion. '

These, however, are minor points. Mr. Symonds is to be warmlycongratulated on the completion of his history of the Renaissance inItaly. It is a most wonderful monument of literary labour, and its valueto the student of Humanism cannot be doubted. We have often had occasionto differ from Mr. Symonds on questions of detail, and we have more thanonce felt it our duty to protest against the rhetoric and over-emphasisof his style, but we fully recognise the importance of his work and theimpetus he has given to the study of one of the vital periods of theworld's history. Mr. Symonds' learning has not made him a pedant; hisculture has widened not narrowed his sympathies, and though he can hardlybe called a great historian, yet he will always occupy a place in Englishliterature as one of the remarkable men of letters in the nineteenthcentury. 

Renaissance in Italy: The Catholic Reaction. In Two Parts. By JohnAddington Symonds. (Smith, Elder and Co. )

A 'JOLLY' ART CRITIC

(Pall Mall Gazette, November 18, 1886. )

There is a healthy bank-holiday atmosphere about this book which isextremely pleasant. Mr. Quilter is entirely free from affectation of anykind. He rollicks through art with the recklessness of the tourist anddescribes its beauties with the enthusiasm of the auctioneer. To many, no doubt, he will seem to be somewhat blatant and bumptious, but weprefer to regard him as being simply British. Mr. Quilter is the apostleof the middle classes, and we are glad to welcome his gospel. Afterlistening so long to the Don Quixote of art, to listen once to SanchoPanza is both salutary and refreshing. 

As for his Sententiae, they differ very widely in character and subject. Some of them are ethical, such as 'Humility may be carried too far'; someliterary, as 'For one Froude there are a thousand Mrs. Markhams'; andsome scientific, as 'Objects which are near display more detail thanthose which are further off. ' Some, again, breathe a fine spirit ofoptimism, as 'Picturesqueness is the birthright of the bargee'; othersare jubilant, as 'Paint firm and be jolly'; and many are purelyautobiographical, such as No. 97, 'Few of us understand what it is thatwe mean by Art. ' Nor is Mr. Quilter's manner less interesting than hismatter. He tells us that at this festive season of the year, withChristmas and roast beef looming before us, 'Similes drawn from eatingand its results occur most readily to the mind. ' So he announces that'Subject is the diet of painting, ' that 'Perspective is the bread ofart, ' and that 'Beauty is in some way like jam'; drawings, he points out, 'are not made by recipe like puddings, ' nor is art composed of 'suet, raisins, and candied peel, ' though Mr. Cecil Lawson's landscapes do'smack of indigestion. ' Occasionally, it is true, he makes daringexcursions into other realms of fancy, as when he says that 'in the bestReynolds landscapes, one seems _to smell the sawdust_, ' or that 'advancein art is of a _kangaroo_ character'; but, on the whole, he is happiestin his eating similes, and the secret of his style is evidently 'Lametaphore vient en mangeant. '

About artists and their work Mr. Quilter has, of course, a great deal tosay. Sculpture he regards as 'Painting's poor relation'; so, with theexception of a jaunty allusion to the 'rough modelling' of Tanagrafigurines he hardly refers at all to the plastic arts; but on painters hewrites with much vigour and joviality. Holbein's wonderful Courtportraits naturally do not give him much pleasure; in fact, he comparesthem as works of art to the sham series of Scottish kings at Holyrood;but Dore, he tells us, had a wider imaginative range in all subjectswhere the gloomy and the terrible played leading parts than probably anyartist who ever lived, and may be called 'the Carlyle of artists. ' InGainsborough he sees 'a plainness almost amounting to brutality, ' while'vulgarity and snobbishness' are the chief qualities he finds in SirJoshua Reynolds. He has grave doubts whether Sir Frederick Leighton'swork is really 'Greek, after all, ' and can discover in it but little of'rocky Ithaca. ' Mr. Poynter, however, is a cart-horse compared to thePresident, and Frederick Walker was 'a dull Greek' because he had no'sympathy with poetry. ' Linnell's pictures, are 'a sort of "Up, Guards, and at 'em" paintings, ' and Mason's exquisite idylls are 'as national asa Jingo poem'! Mr. Birket Foster's landscapes 'smile at one much in thesame way that Mr. Carker used to "flash his teeth, "' and Mr. John Colliergives his sitter 'a cheerful slap on the back, before he says, like ashampooer in a Turkish bath, "Next man!" Mr. Herkomer's art is, 'if nota catch-penny art, at all events a catch-many-pounds art, ' and Mr. W. B. Richmond is a 'clever trifler, ' who 'might do really good work' 'if hewould employ his time in learning to paint. ' It is obviously unnecessaryfor us to point out how luminous these criticisms are, how delicate inexpression. The remarks on Sir Joshua Reynolds alone exemplify the truthof Sententia No. 19, 'From a picture we gain but little more than webring. ' On the general principles of art Mr. Quilter writes with equallucidity. That there is a difference between colour and colours, that anartist, be he portrait-painter or dramatist, always reveals himself inhis manner, are ideas that can hardly be said to occur to him; but Mr. Quilter really does his best and bravely faces every difficulty in modernart, with the exception of Mr. Whistler. Painting, he tells us, is 'of adifferent quality to mathematics, ' and finish in art is 'adding morefact'! Portrait painting is a bad pursuit for an emotional artist as itdestroys his personality and his sympathy; however, even for theemotional artist there is hope, as a portrait can be converted into apicture 'by adding to the likeness of the sitter some dramatic interestor some picturesque adjunct'! As for etchings, they are of twokinds--British and foreign. The latter fail in 'propriety. ' Yet, 'really fine etching is as free and easy as is the chat between old chumsat midnight over a smoking-room fire. ' Consonant with these rollickingviews of art is Mr. Quilter's healthy admiration for 'the three primarycolours: red, blue, and yellow. ' Any one, he points out, 'can paint ingood tone who paints only in black and white, ' and 'the great sign of agood decorator' is 'his capability of doing without neutral tints. 'Indeed, on decoration Mr. Quilter is almost eloquent. He laments mostbitterly the divorce that has been made between decorative art and 'whatwe usually call "pictures, "' makes the customary appeal to the LastJudgment, and reminds us that in the great days of art Michael Angelo wasthe 'furnishing upholsterer. ' With the present tendencies of decorativeart in England Mr. Quilter, consequently, has but little sympathy, and hemakes a gallant appeal to the British householder to stand no morenonsense. Let the honest fellow, he says, on his return from hiscounting-house tear down the Persian hangings, put a chop on theAnatolian plate, mix some toddy in the Venetian glass, and carry his wifeoff to the National Gallery to look at 'our own Mulready'! And then thepicture he draws of the ideal home, where everything, though ugly, ishallowed by domestic memories, and where beauty appeals not to theheartless eye but the family affections; 'baby's chair there, and themother's work-basket . . . Near the fire, and the ornaments Fred broughthome from India on the mantel-board'! It is really impossible not to betouched by so charming a description. How valuable, also, in connectionwith house decoration is Sententia No. 351, 'There is nothing furnishes aroom like a bookcase, _and plenty of books in it_. ' How cultivated themind that thus raises literature to the position of upholstery and putsthought on a level with the antimacassar!

And, finally, for the young workers in art Mr. Quilter has loud words ofencouragement. With a sympathy that is absolutely reckless of grammar, he knows from experience 'what an amount of study and mental strain _are_involved in painting a bad picture honestly'; he exhorts them (SententiaNo. 267) to 'go on quite bravely and sincerely making mess after messfrom Nature, ' and while sternly warning them that there is somethingwrong if they do not 'feel _washed out_ after each drawing, ' he stillurges them to 'put a new piece of goods in the window' every morning. Infact, he is quite severe on Mr. Ruskin for not recognising that 'apicture should denote the frailty of man, ' and remarks with pleasingcourtesy and felicitous grace that 'many phases of feeling . . . Are asmuch a dead letter to this great art teacher, as Sanskrit to an Islingtoncabman. ' Nor is Mr. Quilter one of those who fails to practice what hepreaches. Far from it. He goes on quite bravely and sincerely makingmess after mess from literature, and misquotes Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Alfred de Musset, Mr. Matthew Arnold, Mr. Swinburne, and Mr. Fitzgerald'sRubaiyat, in strict accordance with Sententia No. 251, which tells usthat 'Work must be abominable if it is ever going to be good. ' Only, unfortunately, his own work never does get good. Not content with hismisquotations, he misspells the names of such well-known painters asMadox-Brown, Bastien Lepage and Meissonier, hesitates between Ingres andIngres, talks of _Mr_. Millais and _Mr_. Linton, alludes to Mr. FrankHoll simply as 'Hall, ' speaks with easy familiarity of Mr. Burne-Jones as'Jones, ' and writes of the artist whom he calls 'old Chrome' with anaffection that reminds us of Mr. Tulliver's love for Jeremy Taylor. Onthe whole, the book will not do. We fully admit that it is extremelyamusing and, no doubt, Mr. Quilter is quite earnest in his endeavours toelevate art to the dignity of manual labour, but the extraordinaryvulgarity of the style alone will always be sufficient to prevent theseSententiae Artis from being anything more than curiosities of literature. Mr. Quilter has missed his chance; for he has failed even to make himselfthe Tupper of Painting. 

Sententiae: Artis: First Principles of Art for Painters and PictureLovers. By Harry Quilter, M. A. (Isbister. )

[A reply to this review appeared on November 23. ]

A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY THROUGH LITERATURE

(Pall Mall Gazette, December 1, 1886. )

This is undoubtedly an interesting book, not merely through its eloquenceand earnestness, but also through the wonderful catholicity of taste thatit displays. Mr. Noel has a passion for panegyric. His eulogy on Keatsis closely followed by a eulogy on Whitman, and his praise of LordTennyson is equalled only by his praise of Mr. Robert Buchanan. Sometimes, we admit, we would like a little more fineness ofdiscrimination, a little more delicacy of perception. Sincerity ofutterance is valuable in a critic, but sanity of judgment is morevaluable still, and Mr. Noel's judgments are not always distinguished bytheir sobriety. Many of the essays, however, are well worth reading. Thebest is certainly that on The Poetic Interpretation of Nature, in whichMr. Noel claims that what is called by Mr. Ruskin the 'pathetic fallacyof literature' is in reality a vital emotional truth; but the essays onHugo and Mr. Browning are good also; the little paper entitled Rambles bythe Cornish Seas is a real marvel of delightful description, and themonograph on Chatterton has a good deal of merit, though we must protestvery strongly against Mr. Noel's idea that Chatterton must be modernisedbefore he can be appreciated. Mr. Noel has absolutely no rightwhatsoever to alter Chatterton's' yonge damoyselles' and '_anlace_ fell'into 'youthful damsels' and '_weapon_ fell, ' for Chatterton's archaismswere an essential part of his inspiration and his method. Mr. Noel inone of his essays speaks with much severity of those who prefer sound tosense in poetry and, no doubt, this is a very wicked thing to do; but hehimself is guilty of a much graver sin against art when, in his desire toemphasise the meaning of Chatterton, he destroys Chatterton's music. Inthe modernised version he gives of the wonderful Songe to AElla, he marsby his corrections the poem's metrical beauty, ruins the rhymes and robsthe music of its echo. Nineteenth-century restorations have done quiteenough harm to English architecture without English poetry being treatedin the same manner, and we hope that when Mr. Noel writes again aboutChatterton he will quote from the poet's verse, not from a publisher'sversion. 

This, however, is not by any means the chief blot on Mr. Noel's book. Thefault of his book is that it tells us far more about his own personalfeelings than it does about the qualities of the various works of artthat are criticised. It is in fact a diary of the emotions suggested byliterature, rather than any real addition to literary criticism, and wefancy that many of the poets about whom he writes so eloquently would benot a little surprised at the qualities he finds in their work. Byron, for instance, who spoke with such contempt of what he called 'twaddlingabout trees and babbling o' green fields'; Byron who cried, 'Away withthis cant about nature! A good poet can imbue a pack of cards with morepoetry than inhabits the forests of America, ' is claimed by Mr. Noel as atrue nature-worshipper and Pantheist along with Wordsworth and Shelley;and we wonder what Keats would have thought of a critic who gravelysuggests that Endymion is 'a parable of the development of the individualsoul. ' There are two ways of misunderstanding a poem. One is tomisunderstand it and the other to praise it for qualities that it doesnot possess. The latter is Mr. Noel's method, and in his anxiety toglorify the artist he often does so at the expense of the work of art. 

Mr. Noel also is constantly the victim of his own eloquence. So facileis his style that it constantly betrays him into crude and extravagantstatements. Rhetoric and over-emphasis are the dangers that Mr. Noel hasnot always succeeded in avoiding. It is extravagant, for instance, tosay that all great poetry has been 'pictorial, ' or that Coleridge'sKnight's Grave is worth many Kubla Khans, or that Byron has 'the splendidimperfection of an AEschylus, ' or that we had lately 'one dramatistliving in England, and only one, who could be compared to Hugo, and thatwas Richard Hengist Horne, ' and that 'to find an English dramatist of thesame order before him we must go back to Sheridan if not to Otway. ' Mr. Noel, again, has a curious habit of classing together the mostincongruous names and comparing the most incongruous works of art. Whatis gained by telling us that 'Sardanapalus' is perhaps hardly equal to'Sheridan, ' that Lord Tennyson's ballad of The Revenge and his Ode on theDeath of the Duke of Wellington are worthy of a place beside Thomson'sRule Britannia, that Edgar Allan Poe, Disraeli and Mr. Alfred Austin areartists of note whom we may affiliate on Byron, and that if Sappho andMilton 'had not high genius, they would be justly reproached assensational'? And surely it is a crude judgment that classes Baudelaire, of all poets, with Marini and mediaeval troubadours, and a crude stylethat writes of 'Goethe, Shelley, Scott, and Wilson, ' for a mortal shouldnot thus intrude upon the immortals, even though he be guilty of holdingwith them that Cain is 'one of the finest poems in the English language. 'It is only fair, however, to add that Mr. Noel subsequently makes morethan ample amends for having opened Parnassus to the public in thisreckless manner, by calling Wilson an 'offal-feeder, ' on the ground thathe once wrote a severe criticism of some of Lord Tennyson's early poems. For Mr. Noel does not mince his words. On the contrary, he speaks withmuch scorn of all euphuism and delicacy of expression and, preferring theaffectation of nature to the affectation of art, he thinks nothing ofcalling other people 'Laura Bridgmans, ' 'Jackasses' and the like. This, we think, is to be regretted, especially in a writer so cultured as Mr. Noel. For, though indignation may make a great poet, bad temper alwaysmakes a poor critic. 

On the whole, Mr. Noel's book has an emotional rather than anintellectual interest. It is simply a record of the moods of a man ofletters, and its criticisms merely reveal the critic without illuminatingwhat he would criticise for us. The best that we can say of it is thatit is a Sentimental Journey through Literature, the worst that any onecould say of it is that it has all the merits of such an expedition. 

Essays on Poetry and Poets. By the Hon. Roden Noel. (Kegan Paul. )

COMMON-SENSE IN ART

(Pall Mall Gazette, January 8, 1887. )

At this critical moment in the artistic development of England Mr. JohnCollier has come forward as the champion of common-sense in art. It willbe remembered that Mr. Quilter, in one of his most vivid and picturesquemetaphors, compared Mr. Collier's method as a painter to that of ashampooer in a Turkish bath. {119} As a writer Mr. Collier is no lessinteresting. It is true that he is not eloquent, but then he censureswith just severity 'the meaningless eloquence of the writers onaesthetics'; we admit that he is not subtle, but then he is careful toremind us that Leonardo da Vinci's views on painting are nonsensical; hisqualities are of a solid, indeed we may say of a stolid order; he isthoroughly honest, sturdy and downright, and he advises us, if we want toknow anything about art, to study the works of 'Helmholtz, Stokes, orTyndall, ' to which we hope we may be allowed to add Mr. Collier's ownManual of Oil Painting. 

For this art of painting is a very simple thing indeed, according to Mr. Collier. It consists merely in the 'representation of natural objects bymeans of pigments on a flat surface. ' There is nothing, he tells us, 'sovery mysterious' in it after all. 'Every natural object appears to us asa sort of pattern of different shades and colours, ' and 'the task of theartist is so to arrange his shades and colours on his canvas that asimilar pattern is produced. ' This is obviously pure common-sense, andit is clear that art-definitions of this character can be comprehended bythe very meanest capacity and, indeed, may be said to appeal to it. Forthe perfect development, however, of this pattern-producing faculty asevere training is necessary. The art student must begin by paintingchina, crockery, and 'still life' generally. He should rule his straightlines and employ actual measurements wherever it is possible. He willalso find that a plumb-line comes in very useful. Then he should proceedto Greek sculpture, for from pottery to Phidias is only one step. Ultimately he will arrive at the living model, and as soon as he can'faithfully represent any object that he has before him' he is a painter. After this there is, of course, only one thing to be considered, theimportant question of subject. Subjects, Mr. Collier tells us, are oftwo kinds, ancient and modern. Modern subjects are more healthy thanancient subjects, but the real difficulty of modernity in art is that theartist passes his life with respectable people, and that respectablepeople are unpictorial. 'For picturesqueness, ' consequently, he shouldgo to 'the rural poor, ' and for pathos to the London slums. Ancientsubjects offer the artist a very much wider field. If he is fond of'rich stuffs and costly accessories' he should study the Middle Ages; ifhe wishes to paint beautiful people, 'untrammelled by any considerationsof historical accuracy, ' he should turn to the Greek and Roman mythology;and if he is a 'mediocre painter, ' he should choose his 'subject from theOld and New Testament, ' a recommendation, by the way, that many of ourRoyal Academicians seem already to have carried out. To paint a realhistorical picture one requires the assistance of a theatrical costumierand a photographer. From the former one hires the dresses and the lattersupplies one with the true background. Besides subject-pictures thereare also portraits and landscapes. Portrait painting, Mr. Collier tellsus, 'makes no demands on the imagination. ' As is the sitter, so is thework of art. If the sitter be commonplace, for instance, it would be'contrary to the fundamental principles of portraiture to make thepicture other than commonplace. ' There are, however, certain rules thatshould be followed. One of the most important of these is that theartist should always consult his sitter's relations before he begins thepicture. If they want a profile he must do them a profile; if theyrequire a full face he must give them a full face; and he should becareful also to get their opinion as to the costume the sitter shouldwear and 'the sort of expression he should put on. ' 'After all, ' saysMr. Collier pathetically, 'it is they who have to live with the picture. '

Besides the difficulty of pleasing the victim's family, however, there isthe difficulty of pleasing the victim. According to Mr. Collier, and heis, of course, a high authority on the matter, portrait painters boretheir sitters very much. The true artist consequently should encouragehis sitter to converse, or get some one to read to him; for if the sitteris bored the portrait will look sad. Still, if the sitter has not got anamiable expression naturally the artist is not bound to give him one, nor'if he is essentially ungraceful' should the artist ever 'put him in agraceful attitude. ' As regards landscape painting, Mr. Collier tells usthat 'a great deal of nonsense has been talked about the impossibility ofreproducing nature, ' but that there is nothing really to prevent apicture giving to the eye exactly the same impression that an actualscene gives, for that when he visited 'the celebrated panorama of theSiege of Paris' he could hardly distinguish the painted from the realcannons! The whole passage is extremely interesting, and is really oneout of many examples we might give of the swift and simple manner inwhich the common-sense method solves the great problems of art. The bookconcludes with a detailed exposition of the undulatory theory of lightaccording to the most ancient scientific discoveries. Mr. Collier pointsout how important it is for an artist to hold sound views on the subjectof ether waves, and his own thorough appreciation of Science may beestimated by the definition he gives of it as being 'neither more norless than knowledge. '

Mr. Collier has done his work with much industry and earnestness. Indeed, nothing but the most conscientious seriousness, combined with reallabour, could have produced such a book, and the exact value of common-sense in art has never before been so clearly demonstrated. 

A Manual of Oil Painting. By the Hon. John Collier. (Cassell and Co. )

MINER AND MINOR POETS

(Pall Mall Gazette, February 1, 1887. )

The conditions that precede artistic production are so constantly treatedas qualities of the work of art itself that one sometimes is tempted towish that all art were anonymous. Yet there are certain forms of art soindividual in their utterance, so purely personal in their expression, that for a full appreciation of their style and manner some knowledge ofthe artist's life is necessary. To this class belongs Mr. Skipsey'sCarols from the Coal-Fields, a volume of intense human interest and highliterary merit, and we are consequently glad to see that Dr. SpenceWatson has added a short biography of his friend to his friend's poems, for the life and the literature are too indissolubly wedded ever reallyto be separated. Joseph Skipsey, Dr. Watson tells us, was sent into thecoal pits at Percy Main, near North Shields, when he was seven years ofage. Young as he was he had to work from twelve to sixteen hours in theday, generally in the pitch dark, and in the dreary winter months he sawthe sun only upon Sundays. When he went to work he had learned thealphabet and to put words of two letters together, but he was really hisown schoolmaster, and 'taught himself to write, for example, by copyingthe letters from printed bills or notices, when he could get a candleend, --his paper being the trapdoor, which it was his duty to open andshut as the wagons passed through, and his pen a piece of chalk. ' Thefirst book he really read was the Bible, and not content with reading it, he learned by heart the chapters which specially pleased him. Whensixteen years old he was presented with a copy of Lindley Murray'sGrammar, by the aid of which he gained some knowledge of the structuralrules of English. He had already become acquainted with Paradise Lost, and was another proof of Matthew Prior's axiom, 'Who often reads willsometimes want to write, ' for he had begun to write verse when only 'abonnie pit lad. ' For more than forty years of his life he laboured in'the coal-dark underground, ' and is now the caretaker of a Board-schoolin Newcastle-upon-Tyne. As for the qualities of his poetry, they are itsdirectness and its natural grace. He has an intellectual as well as ametrical affinity with Blake, and possesses something of Blake'smarvellous power of making simple things seem strange to us, and strangethings seem simple. How delightful, for instance, is this little poem:

 'Get up!' the caller calls, 'Get up!' And in the dead of night, To win the bairns their bite and sup, I rise a weary wight. 

 My flannel dudden donn'd, thrice o'er My birds are kiss'd, and then I with a whistle shut the door I may not ope again. 

How exquisite and fanciful this stray lyric:

 The wind comes from the west to-night; So sweetly down the lane he bloweth Upon my lips, with pure delight From head to foot my body gloweth. 

 Where did the wind, the magic find To charm me thus? say, heart that knoweth! 'Within a rose on which he blows Before upon thy lips he bloweth!'

We admit that Mr. Skipsey's work is extremely unequal, but when it is atits best it is full of sweetness and strength; and though he hascarefully studied the artistic capabilities of language, he never makeshis form formal by over-polishing. Beauty with him seems to be anunconscious result rather than a conscious aim; his style has all thedelicate charm of chance. We have already pointed out his affinity toBlake, but with Burns also he may be said to have a spiritual kinship, and in the songs of the Northumbrian miner we meet with something of theAyrshire peasant's wild gaiety and mad humour. He gives himself upfreely to his impressions, and there is a fine, careless rapture in hislaughter. The whole book deserves to be read, and much of it deserves tobe loved. Mr. Skipsey can find music for every mood, whether he isdealing with the real experiences of the pitman or with the imaginativeexperiences of the poet, and his verse has a rich vitality about it. Inthese latter days of shallow rhymes it is pleasant to come across someone to whom poetry is a passion not a profession. 

Mr. F. B. Doveton belongs to a different school. In his amazingversatility he reminds us of the gentleman who wrote the immortalhandbills for Mrs. Jarley, for his subjects range from Dr. Carter Moffattand the Ammoniaphone to Mr. Whiteley, Lady Bicyclists, and theImmortality of the Soul. His verses in praise of Zoedone are a fineexample of didactic poetry, his elegy on the death of Jumbo is quite upto the level of the subject, and the stanzas on a watering-place, Who of its merits can e'er think meanly? Scattering ozone to all the land!

are well worthy of a place in any shilling guidebook. Mr. Dovetondivides his poems into grave and gay, but we like him least when he isamusing, for in his merriment there is but little melody, and he makeshis muse grin through a horse-collar. When he is serious he is muchbetter, and his descriptive poems show that he has completely masteredthe most approved poetical phraseology. Our old friend Boreas is as'burly' as ever, 'zephyrs' are consistently 'amorous, ' and 'the welkinrings' upon the smallest provocation; birds are 'the feathered host' or'the sylvan throng, ' the wind 'wantons o'er the lea, ' 'vernal gales'murmur to 'crystal rills, ' and Lempriere's Dictionary supplies the Latinnames for the sun and the moon. Armed with these daring and novelexpressions Mr. Doveton indulges in fierce moods of nature-worship, andbotanises recklessly through the provinces. Now and then, however, wecome across some pleasing passages. Mr. Doveton apparently is anenthusiastic fisherman, and sings merrily of the 'enchanting grayling'and the 'crimson and gold trout' that rise to the crafty angler's'feathered wile. ' Still, we fear that he will never produce any realgood work till he has made up his mind whether destiny intends him for apoet or for an advertising agent, and we venture to hope that should heever publish another volume he will find some other rhyme to 'vision'than 'Elysian, ' a dissonance that occurs five times in this well-meaningbut tedious volume. 

As for Mr. Ashby-Sterry, those who object to the nude in art should atonce read his lays of The Lazy Minstrel and be converted, for over thesepoems the milliner, not the muse, presides, and the result is a littlealarming. As the Chelsea sage investigated the philosophy of clothes, soMr. Ashby-Sterry has set himself to discover the poetry of petticoats, and seems to find much consolation in the thought that, though art islong, skirts are worn short. He is the only pedlar who has climbedParnassus since Autolycus sang of

 Lawn as white as driven snow, 'Cypress black as e'er was crow, and his details are as amazing as his diminutives. He is capable ofpenning a canto to a crinoline, and has a pathetic monody on amackintosh. He sings of pretty puckers and pliant pleats, and iseloquent on frills, frocks and chemisettes. The latest French fashionsstir him to a fine frenzy, and the sight of a pair of Balmoral bootsthrills him with absolute ecstasy. He writes rondels on ribbons, lyricson linen and lace, and his most ambitious ode is addressed to a Tomboy inTrouserettes! Yet his verse is often dainty and delicate, and many ofhis poems are full of sweet and pretty conceits. Indeed, of the Thamesat summer time he writes so charmingly, and with such felicitous grace ofepithet, that we cannot but regret that he has chosen to make himself thePoet of Petticoats and the Troubadour of Trouserettes. 

(1) Carols from the Coal-Fields, and Other Songs and Ballads. By JosephSkipsey. (Walter Scott. )

(2) Sketches in Prose and Verse. By F. B. Doveton. (Sampson Low, Marston and Co. )

(3) The Lazy Minstrel. By J. Ashby-Sterry. (Fisher Unwin. )

A NEW CALENDAR

(Pall Mall Gazette, February 17, 1887. )

Most modern calendars mar the sweet simplicity of our lives by remindingus that each day that passes is the anniversary of some perfectlyuninteresting event. Their compilers display a degraded passion forchronicling small beer, and rake out the dust-heap of history in anardent search after rubbish. Mr. Walter Scott, however, has made a newdeparture and has published a calendar in which every day of the year ismade beautiful for us by means of an elegant extract from the poems ofMr. Alfred Austin. This, undoubtedly, is a step in the right direction. It is true that such aphorisms as

 Graves are a _mother's dimples_ When we complain, or

 The primrose wears a constant smile, And captive takes the heart, can hardly be said to belong to the very highest order of poetry, still, they are preferable, on the whole, to the date of Hannah More's birth, orof the burning down of Exeter Change, or of the opening of the GreatExhibition; and though it would be dangerous to make calendars the basisof Culture, we should all be much improved if we began each day with afine passage of English poetry. How far this desirable result can beattained by a use of the volume now before us is, perhaps, open toquestion, but it must be admitted that its anonymous compiler has donehis work very conscientiously, nor will we quarrel with him for the factthat he constantly repeats the same quotation twice over. No doubt itwas difficult to find in Mr. Austin's work three hundred and sixty-fivedifferent passages really worthy of insertion in an almanac, and, besides, our climate has so degenerated of late that there is no reasonat all why a motto perfectly suitable for February should not be equallyappropriate when August has set in with its usual severity. For themisprints there is less excuse. Even the most uninteresting poet cannotsurvive bad editing. 

Prefixed to the Calendar is an introductory note from the pen of Mr. William Sharp, written in that involved and affected style which is Mr. Sharp's distinguishing characteristic, and displaying that intimateacquaintance with Sappho's lost poems which is the privilege only ofthose who are not acquainted with Greek literature. As a criticism it isnot of much value, but as an advertisement it is quite excellent. Indeed, Mr. Sharp hints mysteriously at secret political influence, and tells usthat though Mr. Austin 'sings with Tityrus' yet he 'has conversed withAEneas, ' which, we suppose, is a euphemistic method of alluding to thefact that Mr. Austin once lunched with Lord Beaconsfield. It is for thepoet, however, not for the politician, that Mr. Sharp reserves hisloftiest panegyric and, in his anxiety to smuggle the author of Leszkothe Bastard and Grandmother's Teaching into the charmed circle of theImmortals, he leaves no adjective unturned, quoting and misquoting Mr. Austin with a recklessness that is absolutely fatal to the cause hepleads. For mediocre critics are usually safe in their generalities; itis in their reasons and examples that they come so lamentably to grief. When, for instance, Mr. Sharp tells us that lines with the 'naturalmagic' of Shakespeare, Keats and Coleridge are 'far from infrequent' inMr. Austin's poems, all that we can say is that we have never come acrossany lines of the kind in Mr. Austin's published works, but it isdifficult to help smiling when Mr. Sharp gravely calls upon us to note'the illuminative significance' of such a commonplace verse as

 My manhood keeps the dew of morn, And what have I to give; Being right glad that I was born, And thankful that I live. 

Nor do Mr. Sharp's constant misquotations really help him out of hisdifficulties. Such a line as

 A meadow ribbed with _drying_ swathes of hay, has at least the merit of being a simple, straightforward description ofan ordinary scene in an English landscape, but not much can be said infavour of

 A meadow ribbed with _dying_ swathes of hay, which is Mr. Sharp's own version, and one that he finds 'delightfullysuggestive. ' It is indeed suggestive, but only of that want of care thatcomes from want of taste. 

On the whole, Mr. Sharp has attempted an impossible task. Mr. Austin isneither an Olympian nor a Titan, and all the puffing in Paternoster Rowcannot set him on Parnassus. 

His verse is devoid of all real rhythmical life; it may have the metre ofpoetry, but it has not often got its music, nor can there be any truedelicacy in the ear that tolerates such rhymes as 'chord' and 'abroad. 'Even the claim that Mr. Sharp puts forward for him, that his muse takesher impressions directly from nature and owes nothing to books, cannot besustained for a moment. Wordsworth is a great poet, but bad echoes ofWordsworth are extremely depressing, and when Mr. Austin calls the cuckoo a

 Voyaging voice

and tells us that

 The stockdove _broods_ Low to itself, we must really enter a protest against such silly plagiarisms. 

Perhaps, however, we are treating Mr. Sharp too seriously. He admitshimself that it was at the special request of the compiler of theCalendar that he wrote the preface at all, and though he courteously addsthat the task is agreeable to him, still he shows only too clearly thathe considers it a task and, like a clever lawyer or a popular clergyman, tries to atone for his lack of sincerity by a pleasing over-emphasis. Noris there any reason why this Calendar should not be a great success. Ifpublished as a broad-sheet, with a picture of Mr. Austin 'conversing withAEneas, ' it might gladden many a simple cottage home and prove a sourceof innocent amusement to the Conservative working-man. 

Days of the Year: A Poetic Calendar from the Works of Alfred Austin. Selected and edited by A. S. With Introduction by William Sharp. (WalterScott. )

THE POETS' CORNER--II

(Pall Mall Gazette, March 8, 1837. )

A little schoolboy was once asked to explain the difference between proseand poetry. After some consideration he replied, '"blue violets" isprose, and "violets blue" is poetry. ' The distinction, we admit, is notexhaustive, but it seems to be the one that is extremely popular with ourminor poets. Opening at random The Queens Innocent we come acrosspassages like this:

 Full gladly would I sit Of such a potent magus at the feet, and this:

 The third, while yet a youth, Espoused a lady noble but not royal, _One only son who gave him_--Pharamond--

lines that, apparently, rest their claim to be regarded as poetry ontheir unnecessary and awkward inversions. Yet this poem is not withoutbeauty, and the character of Nardi, the little prince who is treated asthe Court fool, shows a delicate grace of fancy, and is both tender andtrue. The most delightful thing in the whole volume is a little lyriccalled April, which is like a picture set to music. 

The Chimneypiece of Bruges is a narrative poem in blank verse, and tellsus of a young artist who, having been unjustly convicted of his wife'smurder, spends his life in carving on the great chimneypiece of theprison the whole story of his love and suffering. The poem is full ofcolour, but the blank verse is somewhat heavy in movement. There aresome pretty things in the book, and a poet without hysterics is rare. 

Dr. Dawson Burns's Oliver Cromwell is a pleasant panegyric on theProtector, and reads like a prize poem by a nice sixth-form boy. Theverses on The Good Old Times should be sent as a leaflet to all Tories ofMr. Chaplin's school, and the lines on Bunker's Hill, beginning, I stand on Bunker's towering pile, are sure to be popular in America. 

K. E. V. 's little volume is a series of poems on the Saints. Each poemis preceded by a brief biography of the Saint it celebrates--which is avery necessary precaution, as few of them ever existed. It does notdisplay much poetic power, and such lines as these on St. Stephen, --

 Did ever man before so fall asleep? A cruel shower of stones his only bed, For lullaby the curses loud and deep, His covering with blood red--

may be said to add another horror to martyrdom. Still it is a thoroughlywell-intentioned book and eminently suitable for invalids. 

Mr. Foskett's poems are very serious and deliberate. One of the best ofthem, Harold Glynde, is a Cantata for Total Abstainers, and has alreadybeen set to music. A Hindoo Tragedy is the story of an enthusiasticBrahmin reformer who tries to break down the prohibition against widowsmarrying, and there are other interesting tales. Mr. Foskett hasapparently forgotten to insert the rhymes in his sonnet to Wordsworth;but, as he tells us elsewhere that 'Poesy is uninspired by Art, ' perhapshe is only heralding a new and formless form. He is always sincere inhis feelings, and his apostrophe to Canon Farrar is equalled only by hisapostrophe to Shakespeare. 

The Pilgrimage of Memory suffers a good deal by being printed as poetry, and Mr. Barker should republish it at once as a prose work. Take, forinstance, this description of a lady on a runaway horse:--

 Her screams alarmed the Squire, who seeing the peril of his daughter, rode frantic after her. I saw at once the danger, and stepping from the footpath, show'd myself before the startled animal, which forthwith slackened pace, and darting up adroitly, I seized the rein, and in another moment, had released the maiden's foot, and held her, all insensible, within my arms. Poor girl, her head and face were sorely bruised, and I tried hard to staunch the blood which flowed from many a scalp-wound, and wipe away the dust that disfigured her lovely features. In another moment the Squire was by my side. 'Poor child, ' he cried, alarmed, 'is she dead?' 'No, sir; not dead, I think, ' said I, 'but sorely bruised and injured. '

There is clearly nothing to be gained by dividing the sentences of thissimple and straightforward narrative into lines of unequal length, andMr. Barker's own arrangement of the metre, In another moment, The Squire was by my side. 'Poor child, ' he cried, alarmed, 'is she dead?' 'No, sir; not dead, I think, ' said I, 'But sorely bruised and injured, '

seems to us to be quite inferior to ours. We beg that the second editionof The Pilgrimage of Memory may be issued as a novel in prose. 

Mr. Gladstone Turner believes that we are on the verge of a great socialcataclysm, and warns us that our _cradles_ are even now being rocked by_slumbering volcanoes_! We hope that there is no truth in thisstatement, and that it is merely a startling metaphor introduced for thesake of effect, for elsewhere in the volume there is a great deal ofbeauty which we should be sorry to think was doomed to immediateextinction. The Choice, for instance, is a charming poem, and the sonneton Evening would be almost perfect if it were not for an unpleasantassonance in the fifth line. Indeed, so good is much of Mr. GladstoneTurner's work that we trust he will give up rhyming 'real' to 'steal' and'feel, ' as such bad habits are apt to grow on careless poets and to blunttheir ear for music. 

Nivalis is a five-act tragedy in blank verse. Most plays that arewritten to be read, not to be acted, miss that condensation anddirectness of expression which is one of the secrets of true dramaticdiction, and Mr. Schwartz's tragedy is consequently somewhat verbose. Still, it is full of fine lines and noble scenes. It is essentially awork of art, and though, as far as language is concerned, the personagesall speak through the lips of the poet, yet in passion and purpose theircharacters are clearly differentiated, and the Queen Nivalis and herlover Giulio are drawn with real psychological power. We hope that someday Mr. Schwartz will write a play for the stage, as he has the dramaticinstinct and the dramatic imagination, and can make life pass intoliterature without robbing it of its reality. 

(1) The Queen's Innocent, with Other Poems. By Elise Cooper. (DavidStott. )

(2) The Chimneypiece of Bruges and Other Poems. By Constance E. Dixon. (Elliot Stock. )

(3) Oliver Cromwell and Other Poems. By Dawson Burns, D. D. (Partridgeand Co. )

(4) The Circle of Saints. By K. E. V. (Swan Sonnenschein and Co. )

(5) Poems. By Edward Foskett. (Kegan Paul. )

(6) The Pilgrimage of Memory. By John Thomas Barker. (Simpkin, Marshalland Co. )

(7) Errata. By G. Gladstone Turner. (Longmans, Green and Co. )

(8) Nivalis. By J. M. W. Schwartz. (Kegan Paul. )

GREAT WRITERS BY LITTLE MEN

(Pall Mall Gazette, March 28, 1887. )

In an introductory note prefixed to the initial volume of 'GreatWriters, ' a series of literary monographs now being issued by Mr. WalterScott, the publisher himself comes forward in the kindest manner possibleto give his authors the requisite 'puff preliminary, ' and ventures toexpress the modest opinion that such original and valuable works 'havenever before been produced in any part of the world at a price so low asa shilling a volume. ' Far be it from us to make any heartless allusionto the fact that Shakespeare's Sonnets were brought out at fivepence, orthat for fourpence-halfpenny one could have bought a Martial in ancientRome. Every man, a cynical American tells us, has the right to beat adrum before his booth. Still, we must acknowledge that Mr. Walter Scottwould have been much better employed in correcting some of the moreobvious errors that appear in his series. When, for instance, we comeacross such a phrase as 'the brotherly liberality of the brothersWedgewood, ' the awkwardness of the expression is hardly atoned for by thefact that the name of the great potter is misspelt; Longfellow is soessentially poor in rhymes that it is unfair to rob him even of one, andthe misquotation on page 77 is absolutely unkind; the joke Coleridgehimself made upon the subject should have been sufficient to remind anyone that 'Comberbach' (sic) was not the name under which he enlisted, andno real beauty is added to the first line of his pathetic Work WithoutHope by printing 'lare' (sic) instead of 'lair. ' The truth is that allpremature panegyrics bring their own punishment upon themselves and, inthe present case, though the series has only just entered upon existence, already a great deal of the work done is careless, disappointing, unequaland tedious. 

Mr. Eric Robertson's Longfellow is a most depressing book. No onesurvives being over-estimated, nor is there any surer way of destroyingan author's reputation than to glorify him without judgment and to praisehim without tact. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was one of the first truemen of letters America produced, and as such deserves a high place in anyhistory of American civilisation. To a land out of breath in its greedfor gain he showed the example of a life devoted entirely to the study ofliterature; his lectures, though not by any means brilliant, were stillproductive of much good; he had a most charming and gracious personality, and he wrote some pretty poems. But his poems are not of the kind thatcall for intellectual analysis or for elaborate description or, indeed, for any serious discussion at all. They are as unsuited for panegyric asthey are unworthy of censure, and it is difficult to help smiling whenMr. Robertson gravely tells us that few modern poets have given utteranceto a faith so comprehensive as that expressed in the Psalm of Life, orthat Evangeline should confer on Longfellow the title of'Golden-mouthed, ' and that the style of metre adopted 'carries the earback to times in the world's history when grand simplicities were sung. 'Surely Mr. Robertson does not believe that there is any connection at allbetween Longfellow's unrhymed dactylics and the hexameter of Greece andRome, or that any one reading Evangeline would be reminded of Homer's orVirgil's line? Where also lies the advantage of confusing popularitywith poetic power? Though the Psalm of Life be shouted from Maine toCalifornia, that would not make it true poetry. Why call upon us toadmire a bad misquotation from the Midnight Mass for the Dying Year, andwhy talk of Longfellow's 'hundreds of imitators'? Longfellow has noimitators, for of echoes themselves there are no echoes and it is onlystyle that makes a school. 

Now and then, however, Mr. Robertson considers it necessary to assume acritical attitude. He tells us, for instance, that whether or notLongfellow was a genius of the first order, it must be admitted that heloved social pleasures and was a good eater and judge of wines, admiring'Bass's ale' more than anything else he had seen in England! The remarkson Excelsior are even still more amazing. Excelsior, says Mr. Robertson, is not a ballad because a ballad deals either with real or withsupernatural people, and the hero of the poem cannot be brought undereither category. For, 'were he of human flesh, his madcap notion ofscaling a mountain with the purpose of getting to the sky would be simplydrivelling lunacy, ' to say nothing of the fact that the peak in questionis much frequented by tourists, while, on the other hand, 'it would beabsurd to suppose him a spirit . . . For no spirit would be so silly asclimb a snowy mountain for nothing'! It is really painful to have toread such preposterous nonsense, and if Mr. Walter Scott imagines thatwork of this kind is 'original and valuable' he has much to learn. Norare Mr. Robertson's criticisms upon other poets at all more felicitous. The casual allusion to Herrick's 'confectioneries of verse' is, ofcourse, quite explicable, coming as it does from an editor who excludedHerrick from an anthology of the child-poems of our literature in favourof Mr. Ashby-Sterry and Mr. William Sharp, but when Mr. Robertson tellsus that Poe's 'loftiest flights of imagination in verse . . . Rise intono more empyreal realm than the fantastic, ' we can only recommend him toread as soon as possible the marvellous lines To Helen, a poem asbeautiful as a Greek gem and as musical as Apollo's lute. The remarks, too, on Poe's critical estimate of his own work show that Mr. Robertsonhas never really studied the poet on whom he pronounces such glib andshallow judgments, and exemplify very clearly the fact that evendogmatism is no excuse for ignorance. 

After reading Mr. Hall Caine's Coleridge we are irresistibly reminded ofwhat Wordsworth once said about a bust that had been done of himself. After contemplating it for some time, he remarked, 'It is not a badWordsworth, but it is not the real Wordsworth; it is not Wordsworth thepoet, it is the sort of Wordsworth who might be Chancellor of theExchequer. ' Mr. Caine's Coleridge is certainly not the sort of Coleridgewho might have been Chancellor of the Exchequer, for the author ofChristabel was not by any means remarkable as a financier; but, for allthat, it is not the real Coleridge, it is not Coleridge the poet. Theincidents of the life are duly recounted; the gunpowder plot atCambridge, the egg-hot and oronokoo at the little tavern in NewgateStreet, the blue coat and white waistcoat that so amazed the worthyUnitarians, and the terrible smoking experiment at Birmingham are allcarefully chronicled, as no doubt they should be in every popularbiography; but of the spiritual progress of the man's soul we hearabsolutely nothing. Never for one single instant are we brought near toColeridge; the magic of that wonderful personality is hidden from us by acloud of mean details, an unholy jungle of facts, and the 'criticalhistory' promised to us by Mr. Walter Scott in his unfortunate preface isconspicuous only by its absence. 

Carlyle once proposed in jest to write a life of Michael Angelo withoutmaking any reference to his art, and Mr. Caine has shown that such aproject is perfectly feasible. He has written the life of a greatperipatetic philosopher and chronicled only the peripatetics. He hastried to tell us about a poet, and his book might be the biography of thefamous tallow-chandler who would not appreciate the Watchman. The realevents of Coleridge's life are not his gig excursions and his walkingtours; they are his thoughts, dreams and passions, his moments ofcreative impulse, their source and secret, his moods of imaginative joy, their marvel and their meaning, and not his moods merely but the musicand the melancholy that they brought him; the lyric loveliness of hisvoice when he sang, the sterile sorrow of the years when he was silent. It is said that every man's life is a Soul's Tragedy. Coleridge'scertainly was so, and though we may not be able to pluck out the heart ofhis mystery, still let us recognise that mystery is there; and that thegoings-out and comings-in of a man, his places of sojourn and his roadsof travel are but idle things to chronicle, if that which is the man beleft unrecorded. So mediocre is Mr. Caine's book that even accuracycould not make it better. 

On the whole, then, Mr. Walter Scott cannot be congratulated on thesuccess of his venture so far, The one really admirable feature of theseries is the bibliography that is appended to each volume. Thesebibliographies are compiled by Mr. Anderson, of the British Museum, andare so valuable to the student, as well as interesting in themselves, that it is much to be regretted that they should be accompanied by suchtedious letterpress. 

(1) Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. By Eric S. Robertson. 

(2) Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. By Hall Caine. 'Great Writers'Series. (Walter Scott. )

A NEW BOOK ON DICKENS

(Pall Mall Gazette, March 31, 1887. )

Mr. Marzials' Dickens is a great improvement on the Longfellow andColeridge of his predecessors. It is certainly a little sad to find ourold friend the manager of the Theatre Royal, Portsmouth, appearing as'Mr. Vincent Crumules' (sic), but such misprints are not by any meansuncommon in Mr. Walter Scott's publications, and, on the whole, this is avery pleasant book indeed. It is brightly and cleverly written, admirably constructed, and gives a most vivid and graphic picture of thatstrange modern drama, the drama of Dickens's life. The earlier chaptersare quite excellent, and, though the story of the famous novelist'sboyhood has been often told before, Mr. Marzials shows that it can betold again without losing any of the charm of its interest, while theaccount of Dickens in the plenitude of his glory is most appreciative andgenial. We are really brought close to the man with his indomitableenergy, his extraordinary capacity for work, his high spirits, hisfascinating, tyrannous personality. The description of his method ofreading is admirable, and the amazing stump-campaign in America attains, in Mr. Marzials' hands, to the dignity of a mock-heroic poem. One sideof Dickens's character, however, is left almost entirely untouched, andyet it is one in every way deserving of close study. That Dickens shouldhave felt bitterly towards his father and mother is quite explicable, butthat, while feeling so bitterly, he should have caricatured them for theamusement of the public, with an evident delight in his own humour, hasalways seemed to us a most curious psychological problem. We are farfrom complaining that he did so. Good novelists are much rarer than goodsons, and none of us would part readily with Micawber and Mrs. Nickleby. Still, the fact remains that a man who was affectionate and loving to hischildren, generous and warm-hearted to his friends, and whose books arethe very bacchanalia of benevolence, pilloried his parents to make thegroundlings laugh, and this fact every biographer of Dickens should faceand, if possible, explain. 

As for Mr. Marzials' critical estimate of Dickens as a writer, he tellsus quite frankly that he believes that Dickens at his best was 'one ofthe greatest masters of pathos who ever lived, ' a remark that seems to usan excellent example of what novelists call 'the fine courage ofdespair. ' Of course, no biographer of Dickens could say anything else, just at present. A popular series is bound to express popular views, andcheap criticisms may be excused in cheap books. Besides, it is alwaysopen to every one to accept G. H. Lewes's unfortunate maxim that anyauthor who makes one cry possesses the gift of pathos and, indeed, thereis something very flattering in being told that one's own emotions arethe ultimate test of literature. When Mr. Marzials discusses Dickens'spower of drawing human nature we are upon somewhat safer ground, and wecannot but admire the cleverness with which he passes over his hero'sinnumerable failures. For, in some respects, Dickens might be likened tothose old sculptors of our Gothic cathedrals who could give form to themost fantastic fancy, and crowd with grotesque monsters a curious worldof dreams, but saw little of the grace and dignity of the men and womenamong whom they lived, and whose art, lacking sanity, was thereforeincomplete. Yet they at least knew the limitations of their art, whileDickens never knew the limitations of his. When he tries to be serioushe succeeds only in being dull, when he aims at truth he reaches merelyplatitude. Shakespeare could place Ferdinand and Miranda by the side ofCaliban, and Life recognises them all as her own, but Dickens's Mirandasare the young ladies out of a fashion-book, and his Ferdinands thewalking gentlemen of an unsuccessful company of third-rate players. Solittle sanity, indeed, had Dickens's art that he was never able even tosatirise: he could only caricature; and so little does Mr. Marzialsrealise where Dickens's true strength and weakness lie, that he actuallycomplains that Cruikshank's illustrations are too much exaggerated andthat he could never draw either a lady or a gentleman. 

The latter was hardly a disqualification for illustrating Dickens as fewsuch characters occur in his books, unless we are to regard LordFrederick Verisopht and Sir Mulberry Hawk as valuable studies of highlife; and, for our own part, we have always considered that the greatestinjustice ever done to Dickens has been done by those who have tried toillustrate him seriously. 

In conclusion, Mr. Marzials expresses his belief that a century henceDickens will be read as much as we now read Scott, and says ratherprettily that as long as he is read 'there will be one gentle andhumanising influence the more at work among men, ' which is always auseful tag to append to the life of any popular author. Remembering thatof all forms of error prophecy is the most gratuitous, we will not takeupon ourselves to decide the question of Dickens's immortality. If ourdescendants do not read him they will miss a great source of amusement, and if they do, we hope they will not model their style upon his. Ofthis, however, there is but little danger, for no age ever borrows theslang of its predecessor. As for 'the gentle and humanising influence, 'this is taking Dickens just a little too seriously. 

Life of Charles Dickens. By Frank T. Marzials. 'Great Writers' Series. (Walter Scott. )

OUR BOOK-SHELF

(Pall Mall Gazette, April 12, 1887. )

The Master Of Tanagra is certainly one of Ernst von Wildenbruch's mostdelightful productions. It presents an exceedingly pretty picture of thebright external side of ancient Greek life, and tells how a handsomeyoung Tanagrian left his home for the sake of art, and returned to it forlove's sake--an old story, no doubt, but one which gains a new charm fromits new setting. The historical characters of the book, such asPraxiteles and Phryne, seem somehow less real than those that are purelyimaginary, but this is usually the case in all novels that would recreatethe past for us, and is a form of penalty that Romance has often to paywhen she tries to blend fact with fancy, and to turn the great personagesof history into puppets for a little play. The translation, which isfrom the pen of the Baroness von Lauer, reads very pleasantly, and someof the illustrations are good, though it is impossible to reproduce byany process the delicate and exquisite charm of the Tanagra figurines. 

M. Paul Stapfer in his book Moliere et Shakespeare shows very clearlythat the French have not yet forgiven Schlegel for having threatenedthat, as a reprisal for the atrocities committed by Napoleon, he wouldprove that Moliere was no poet. Indeed, M. Stapfer, while admitting thatone should be fair 'envers tout le monde, meme envers les Allemands, 'charges down upon the German critics with the brilliancy and dash of aFrench cuirassier, and mocks at them for their dulness, at the verymoment that he is annexing their erudition, an achievement for which theFrench genius is justly renowned. As for the relative merits of Moliereand Shakespeare, M. Stapfer has no hesitation in placing the author of LeMisanthrope by the side of the author of Hamlet. Shakespeare's comediesseem to him somewhat wilful and fantastic; he prefers Orgon and Tartuffeto Oberon and Titania, and can hardly forgive Beatrice for having been'born to speak all mirth, and no matter. '

Perhaps he hardly realises that it is as a poet, not as a playwright, that we love Shakespeare in England, and that Ariel singing by the yellowsands, or fairies hiding in a wood near Athens, may be as real as Alcestein his wooing of Celimene, and as true as Harpagon weeping for his money-box; still, his book is full of interesting suggestion, many of hisremarks on literature are quite excellent, and his style has thequalities of grace, distinction, and ease of movement. 

Not so much can be said for Annals of the Life of Shakespeare, which is adull though well-meaning little book. What we do not know aboutShakespeare is a most fascinating subject, and one that would fill avolume, but what we do know about him is so meagre and inadequate thatwhen it is collected together the result is rather depressing. However, there are many people, no doubt, who find a great source of interest inthe fact that he author of The Merchant of Venice once brought an actionfor the sum of 1 pound, 15s. 10d. And gained his suit, and for these thisvolume will have considerable charm. It is a pity that the finest lineBen Jonson ever wrote about Shakespeare should be misquoted at the verybeginning of the book, and the illustration of Shakespeare's monumentgives the inscription very badly indeed. Also, it was Ben Jonson'sstepfather, not his 'father-in-law, ' as stated, who was the bricklayer;but it is quite useless to dwell upon these things, as nobody nowadaysseems to have any time either to correct proofs or to consultauthorities. 

One of the most pleasing volumes that has appeared as yet in theCanterbury Series is the collection of Allan Ramsay's poems. Ramsay, whose profession was the making of periwigs, and whose pleasure was themaking of poetry, is always delightful reading, except when he tries towrite English and to imitate Pope. His Gentle Shepherd is a charmingpastoral play, full of humour and romance; his Vision has a good deal ofnatural fire; and some of his songs, such as The Yellow-hair'd Laddie andThe Lass of Patie's Mill, might rank beside those of Burns. The prefaceto this attractive little edition is from the pen of Mr. J. LogieRobertson, and the simple, straightforward style in which it is writtencontrasts favourably with the silly pompous manner affected by so many ofthe other editors of the series. 

Ramsay's life is worth telling well, and Mr. Robertson tells it well, andgives us a really capital picture of Edinburgh society in the early halfof the last century. 

Dante for Beginners, by Miss Arabella Shore, is a sort of literary guide-book. What Virgil was to the great Florentine, Miss Shore would be tothe British public, and her modest little volume can do no possible harmto Dante, which is more than one can say of many commentaries on theDivine Comedy. 

Miss Phillimore's Studies in Italian Literature is a much more elaboratework, and displays a good deal of erudition. Indeed, the erudition issometimes displayed a little too much, and we should like to see the leadof learning transmuted more often into the gold of thought. The essayson Petrarch and Tasso are tedious, but those on Aleardi and CountArrivabene are excellent, particularly the former. Aleardi was a poet ofwonderful descriptive power, and though, as he said himself, hesubordinated his love of poetry to his love of country, yet in suchservice he found perfect freedom. 

The article on Edoardo Fusco also is full of interest, and is a timelytribute to the memory of one who did so much for the education andculture of modern Italy. On the whole, the book is well worth reading;so well worth reading, indeed, that we hope that the foolish remarks onthe Greek Drama will be amended in a second edition, or, which would bebetter still, struck out altogether. They show a want of knowledge thatmust be the result of years of study. 

(1) The Master of Tanagra. Translated from the German of Ernst vonWildenbruch by the Baroness von Lauer. (H. Grevel and Co. )

(2) Moliere et Shakespeare. By Paul Stapfer. (Hachette. )

(3) Annals of the Life of Shakespeare. (Sampson Low, Marston and Co. )

(4) Poems by Allan Ramsay. Selected and arranged, with a BiographicalSketch of the Poet, by J. Logie Robertson, M. A. 'Canterbury Poets. '(Walter Scott. )

(5) Dante for Beginners. By Arabella Shore. (Chapman and Hall. )

(6) Studies in Italian Literature. By Miss Phillimore. (Sampson Low, Marston and Co. )

A CHEAP EDITION OF A GREAT MAN

(Pall Mall Gazette, April 18, 1887. )

Formerly we used to canonise our great men; nowadays we vulgarise them. The vulgarisation of Rossetti has been going on for some time past withreally remarkable success, and there seems no probability at present ofthe process being discontinued. The grass was hardly green upon thequiet grave in Birchington churchyard when Mr. Hall Caine and Mr. WilliamSharp rushed into print with their Memoirs and Recollections. Then camethe usual mob of magazine-hacks with their various views and attitudes, and now Mr. Joseph Knight has produced for the edification of the Britishpublic a popular biography of the poet of the Blessed Damozel, thepainter of Dante's Dream. 

It is only fair to state that Mr. Knight's work is much better than thatof his predecessors in the same field. His book is, on the whole, modestly and simply written; whatever its other faults may be, it is atleast free from affectation of any kind; and it makes no serious pretenceat being either exhaustive or definitive. Yet the best we can say of itis that it is just the sort of biography Guildenstern might have writtenof Hamlet. Nor does its unsatisfactory character come merely from theludicrous inadequacy of the materials at Mr. Knight's disposal; it is thewhole scheme and method of the book that is radically wrong. Rossetti'swas a great personality, and personalities such as his do not easilysurvive shilling primers. Sooner or later they have inevitably to comedown to the level of their biographers, and in the present instancenothing could be more absolutely commonplace than the picture Mr. Knightgives us of the wonderful seer and singer whose life he has so recklesslyessayed to write. 

No doubt there are many people who will be deeply interested to know thatRossetti was once chased round his garden by an infuriated zebu he wastrying to exhibit to Mr. Whistler, or that he had a great affection for adog called 'Dizzy, ' or that 'sloshy' was one of his favourite words ofcontempt, or that Mr. Gosse thought him very like Chaucer in appearance, or that he had 'an absolute disqualification' for whist-playing, or thathe was very fond of quoting the Bab Ballads, or that he once said that ifhe could live by writing poetry he would see painting d---d! For ourpart, however, we cannot help expressing our regret that such a shallowand superficial biography as this should ever have been published. It isbut a sorry task to rip the twisted ravel from the worn garment of lifeand to turn the grout in a drained cup. Better, after all, that we knewa painter only through his vision and a poet through his song, than thatthe image of a great man should be marred and made mean for us by theclumsy geniality of good intentions. A true artist, and such Rossettiundoubtedly was, reveals himself so perfectly in his work, that unless abiographer has something more valuable to give us than idle anecdotes andunmeaning tales, his labour is misspent and his industry misdirected. 

Bad, however, as is Mr. Knight's treatment of Rossetti's life, histreatment of Rossetti's poetry is infinitely worse. Considering thesmall size of the volume, and the consequently limited number ofextracts, the amount of misquotation is almost incredible, and puts allrecent achievements in this sphere of modern literature completely intothe shade. The fine line in the first canto of Rose Mary:

 What glints there like a lance that flees?

appears as:

 What glints there like a _glance_ that flees?

which is very painful nonsense; in the description of that graceful andfanciful sonnet Autumn Idleness, the deer are represented as '_grazing_from hillock eaves' instead of gazing from hillock-eaves; the opening ofDantis Tenebrae is rendered quite incomprehensible by the substitution of'my' for 'thy' in the second line; even such a well-known ballad asSister Helen is misquoted, and, indeed, from the Burden of Nineveh, theBlessed Damozel, the King's Tragedy and Guido Cavalcanti's lovelyballata, down to the Portrait and such sonnets as Love-sweetness, Farewell to the Glen, and A Match with the Moon, there is not one singlepoem that does not display some careless error or some stupid misprint. 

As for Rossetti's elaborate system of punctuation, Mr. Knight pays noattention to it whatsoever. Indeed, he shows quite a rollickingindifference to all the secrets and subtleties of style, and inserts orremoves stops in a manner that is absolutely destructive to the lyricalbeauty of the verse. The hyphen, also, so constantly employed byRossetti in the case of such expressions as 'hillock-eaves' quoted above, 'hill-fire, ' 'birth-hour, ' and the like, is almost invariablydisregarded, and by the brilliant omission of a semicolon Mr. Knight hassucceeded in spoiling one of the best stanzas in The Staff and Scrip--apoem, by the way, that he speaks of as The Staff and the Scrip (sic). After this tedious comedy of errors it seems almost unnecessary to pointout that the earliest Italian poet is not called Ciullo D'Alcano (sic), or that The Bothie of Toper-na-Fuosich (sic) is not the title of Clough'sboisterous epic, or that Dante and his Cycle (sic) is not the nameRossetti gave to his collection of translations; and why Troy Town shouldappear in the index as Tory Town is really quite inexplicable, unless itis intended as a compliment to Mr. Hall Caine who once dedicated, orrather tried to dedicate, to Rossetti a lecture on the relations of poetsto politics. We are sorry, too, to find an English dramatic criticmisquoting Shakespeare, as we had always been of opinion that this was aprivilege reserved specially for our English actors. We sincerely hopethat there will soon be an end to all biographies of this kind. They roblife of much of its dignity and its wonder, add to death itself a newterror, and make one wish that all art were anonymous. Nor could therehave been any more unfortunate choice of a subject for popular treatmentthan that to which we owe the memoir that now lies before us. A pillarof fire to the few who knew him, and of cloud to the many who knew himnot, Dante Gabriel Rossetti lived apart from the gossip and tittle-tattleof a shallow age. He never trafficked with the merchants for his soul, nor brought his wares into the market-place for the idle to gape at. Passionate and romantic though he was, yet there was in his naturesomething of high austerity. He loved seclusion, and hated notoriety, and would have shuddered at the idea that within a few years after hisdeath he was to make his appearance in a series of popular biographies, sandwiched between the author of Pickwick and the Great Lexicographer. One man alone, the friend his verse won for him, did he desire shouldwrite his life, and it is to Mr. Theodore Watts that we, too, must lookto give us the real Rossetti. It may be admitted at once that Mr. Watts's subject has for the moment been a little spoiled for him. Rudehands have touched it, and unmusical voices have made it sound almostcommon in our ears. Yet none the less is it for him to tell us of themarvel of this man whose art he has analysed with such exquisite insight, whose life he knows as no one else can know it, whom he so loyally lovedand tended, and by whom he was so loyally beloved in turn. As for theothers, the scribblers and nibblers of literature, if they indeedreverence Rossetti's memory, let them pay him the one homage he wouldmost have valued, the gracious homage of silence. 'Though you can fretme, yet you cannot play upon me, ' says Hamlet to his false friend, andeven so might Rossetti speak to those well-intentioned mediocrities whowould seem to know his stops and would sound him to the top of hiscompass. True, they cannot fret him now, for he has passed beyond thepossibility of pain; yet they cannot play upon him either; it is not forthem to pluck out the heart of his mystery. 

There is, however, one feature of this book that deserves unstintedpraise. Mr. Anderson's bibliography will be found of immense use byevery student of Rossetti's work and influence. Perhaps Young's verypowerful attack on Pre-Raphaelitism, as expounded by Mr. Ruskin(Longmans, 1857), might be included, but, in all other respects, it seemsquite complete, and the chronological list of paintings and drawings isreally admirable. When this unfortunate 'Great Writers' Series comes toan end, Mr. Anderson's bibliographies should be collected together andpublished in a separate volume. At present they are in a very second-rate company indeed. 

Life of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. By Joseph Knight. 'Great Writers'Series. (Walter Scott. )

MR. MORRIS'S ODYSSEY

(Pall Mall Gazette, April 26, 1887. )

Of all our modern poets, Mr. William Morris is the one best qualified bynature and by art to translate for us the marvellous epic of thewanderings of Odysseus. For he is our only true story-singer sinceChaucer; if he is a Socialist, he is also a Saga-man; and there was atime when he was never wearied of telling us strange legends of gods andmen, wonderful tales of chivalry and romance. Master as he is ofdecorative and descriptive verse, he has all the Greek's joy in thevisible aspect of things, all the Greek's sense of delicate anddelightful detail, all the Greek's pleasure in beautiful textures andexquisite materials and imaginative designs; nor can any one have akeener sympathy with the Homeric admiration for the workers and thecraftsmen in the various arts, from the stainers in white ivory and theembroiderers in purple and fold, to the weaver sitting by the loom andthe dyer dipping in the vat, the chaser of shield and helmet, the carverof wood or stone. And to all this is added the true temper of highromance, the power to make the past as real to us as the present, thesubtle instinct to discern passion, the swift impulse to portray life. 

It is no wonder the lovers of Greek literature have so eagerly lookedforward to Mr. Morris's version of the Odyssean epic, and now that thefirst volume has appeared, it is not extravagant to say that of all ourEnglish translations this is the most perfect and the most satisfying. Inspite of Coleridge's well-known views on the subject, we have always heldthat Chapman's Odyssey is immeasurably inferior to his Iliad, the meredifference of metre alone being sufficient to set the former in asecondary place; Pope's Odyssey, with its glittering rhetoric and smartantithesis, has nothing of the grand manner of the original; Cowper isdull, and Bryant dreadful, and Worsley too full of Spenserianprettinesses; while excellent though Messrs. Butcher and Lang's versionundoubtedly is in many respects, still, on the whole, it gives us merelythe facts of the Odyssey without providing anything of its artisticeffect. Avia's translation even, though better than almost all itspredecessors in the same field, is not worthy of taking rank beside Mr. Morris's, for here we have a true work of art, a rendering not merely oflanguage into language, but of poetry into poetry, and though the newspirit added in the transfusion may seem to many rather Norse than Greek, and, perhaps at times, more boisterous than beautiful, there is yet avigour of life in every line, a splendid ardour through each canto, thatstirs the blood while one reads like the sound of a trumpet, and that, producing a physical as well as a spiritual delight, exults the senses noless than it exalts the soul. It may be admitted at once that, here andthere, Mr. Morris has missed something of the marvellous dignity of theHomeric verse, and that, in his desire for rushing and ringing metre, hehas occasionally sacrificed majesty to movement, and made statelinessgive place to speed; but it is really only in such blank verse asMilton's that this effect of calm and lofty music can be attained, and inall other respects blank verse is the most inadequate medium forreproducing the full flow and fervour of the Greek hexameter. One merit, at any rate, Mr. Morris's version entirely and absolutely possesses. Itis, in no sense of the word, literary; it seems to deal immediately withlife itself, and to take from the reality of things its own form andcolour; it is always direct and simple, and at its best has something ofthe 'large utterance of the early gods. '

As for individual passages of beauty, nothing could be better than thewonderful description of the house of the Phoeacian king, or the wholetelling of the lovely legend of Circe, or the manner in which the pageantof the pale phantoms in Hades is brought before our eyes. Perhaps thehuge epic humour of the escape from the Cyclops is hardly realised, butthere is always a linguistic difficulty about rendering this fascinatingstory into English, and where we are given so much poetry we should notcomplain about losing a pun; and the exquisite idyll of the meeting andparting with the daughter of Alcinous is really delightfully told. Howgood, for instance, is this passage taken at random from the Sixth Book:

 But therewith unto the handmaids goodly Odysseus spake: 'Stand off I bid you, damsels, while the work in hand I take, And wash the brine from my shoulders, and sleek them all around. Since verily now this long while sweet oil they have not found. But before you nought will I wash me, for shame I have indeed, Amidst of fair-tressed damsels to be all bare of weed. ' So he spake and aloof they gat them, and thereof they told the may, But Odysseus with the river from his body washed away The brine from his back and his shoulders wrought broad and mightily, And from his head was he wiping the foam of the untilled sea; But when he had throughly washed him, and the oil about him had shed He did upon the raiment the gift of the maid unwed. But Athene, Zeus-begotten, dealt with him in such wise That bigger yet was his seeming, and mightier to all eyes, With the hair on his head crisp curling as the bloom of the daffodil. And as when the silver with gold is o'erlaid by a man of skill, Yea, a craftsman whom Hephaestus and Pallas Athene have taught To be master over masters, and lovely work he hath wrought; So she round his head and his shoulders shed grace abundantly. 

It may be objected by some that the line

 With the hair on his head crisp curling as the bloom of the daffodil, is a rather fanciful version of

 [Greek text]

and it certainly seems probable that the allusion is to the dark colourof the hero's hair; still, the point is not one of much importance, though it may be worth noting that a similar expression occurs inOgilby's superbly illustrated translation of the Odyssey, published in1665, where Charles II. 's Master of the Revels in Ireland gives thepassage thus:

 Minerva renders him more tall and fair, Curling in rings like daffodils his hair. 

No anthology, however, can show the true merit of Mr. Morris'stranslation, whose real merit does not depend on stray beauties, nor isrevealed by chance selections, but lies in the absolute rightness andcoherence of the whole, in its purity and justice of touch, its freedomfrom affectation and commonplace, its harmony of form and matter. It issufficient to say that this is a poet's version of a poet, and for suchsurely we should be thankful. In these latter days of coarse and vulgarliterature, it is something to have made the great sea-epic of the Southnative and natural to our northern isle, something to have shown that ourEnglish speech may be a pipe through which Greek lips can blow, somethingto have taught Nausicaa to speak the same language as Perdita. 

The Odyssey of Homer. Done into English Verse by William Morris, authorof The Earthly Paradise. In two volumes. Volume I. (Reeves andTurner. )

For review of Volume II. See Mr. Morris's Completion of the Odyssey, page215. 

A BATCH OF NOVELS

(Pall Mall Gazette, May 2, 1887. )

Of the three great Russian novelists of our time Tourgenieff is by farthe finest artist. He has that spirit of exquisite selection, thatdelicate choice of detail, which is the essence of style; his work isentirely free from any personal intention; and by taking existence at itsmost fiery-coloured moments he can distil into a few pages of perfectprose the moods and passions of many lives. 

Count Tolstoi's method is much larger, and his field of vision moreextended. He reminds us sometimes of Paul Veronese, and, like that greatpainter, can crowd, without over-crowding, the giant canvas on which heworks. We may not at first gain from his works that artistic unity ofimpression which is Tourgenieff's chief charm, but once that we havemastered the details the whole seems to have the grandeur and thesimplicity of an epic. Dostoieffski differs widely from both his rivals. He is not so fine an artist as Tourgenieff, for he deals more with thefacts than with the effects of life; nor has he Tolstoi's largeness ofvision and epic dignity; but he has qualities that are distinctively andabsolutely his own, such as a fierce intensity of passion andconcentration of impulse, a power of dealing with the deepest mysteriesof psychology and the most hidden springs of life, and a realism that ispitiless in its fidelity, and terrible because it is true. Some time agowe had occasion to draw attention to his marvellous novel Crime andPunishment, where in the haunt of impurity and vice a harlot and anassassin meet together to read the story of Dives and Lazarus, and theoutcast girl leads the sinner to make atonement for his sin; nor is thebook entitled Injury and Insult at all inferior to that greatmasterpiece. Mean and ordinary though the surroundings of the story mayseem, the heroine Natasha is like one of the noble victims of Greektragedy; she is Antigone with the passion of Phaedra, and it isimpossible to approach her without a feeling of awe. Greek also is thegloom of Nemesis that hangs over each character, only it is a Nemesisthat does not stand outside of life, but is part of our own nature and ofthe same material as life itself. Aleosha, the beautiful young lad whomNatasha follows to her doom, is a second Tito Melema, and has all Tito'scharm and grace and fascination. Yet he is different. He would neverhave denied Baldassare in the Square at Florence, nor lied to Romolaabout Tessa. He has a magnificent, momentary sincerity, a boyishunconsciousness of all that life signifies, an ardent enthusiasm for allthat life cannot give. There is nothing calculating about him. He neverthinks evil, he only does it. From a psychological point of view he isone of the most interesting characters of modem fiction, as from anartistic he is one of the most attractive. As we grow to know him hestirs strange questions for us, and makes us feel that it is not thewicked only who do wrong, nor the bad alone who work evil. 

And by what a subtle objective method does Dostoieffski show us hischaracters! He never tickets them with a list nor labels them with adescription. We grow to know them very gradually, as we know people whomwe meet in society, at first by little tricks of manner, personalappearance, fancies in dress, and the like; and afterwards by their deedsand words; and even then they constantly elude us, for thoughDostoieffski may lay bare for us the secrets of their nature, yet henever explains his personages away; they are always surprising us bysomething that they say or do, and keep to the end the eternal mystery oflife. 

Irrespective of its value as a work of art, this novel possesses a deepautobiographical interest also, as the character of Vania, the poorstudent who loves Natasha through all her sin and shame, isDostoieffski's study of himself. Goethe once had to delay the completionof one of his novels till experience had furnished him with newsituations, but almost before he had arrived at manhood Dostoieffski knewlife in its most real forms; poverty and suffering, pain and misery, prison, exile, and love, were soon familiar to him, and by the lips ofVania he has told his own story. This note of personal feeling, thisharsh reality of actual experience, undoubtedly gives the book somethingof its strange fervour and terrible passion, yet it has not made itegotistic; we see things from every point of view, and we feel, not thatfiction has been trammelled by fact, but that fact itself has becomeideal and imaginative. Pitiless, too, though Dostoieffski is in hismethod as an artist, as a man he is full of human pity for all, for thosewho do evil as well as for those who suffer it, for the selfish no lessthan for those whose lives are wrecked for others and whose sacrifice isin vain. Since Adam Bede and Le Pere Goriot no more powerful novel hasbeen written than Insult and Injury. 

Mr. Hardinge's book Willow Garth deals, strangely enough, with somethinglike the same idea, though the treatment is, of course, entirelydifferent. A girl of high birth falls passionately in love with a youngfarm-bailiff who is a sort of Arcadian Antinous and a very Ganymede ingaiters. Social difficulties naturally intervene, so she drowns herhandsome rustic in a convenient pond. Mr. Hardinge has a most charmingstyle, and, as a writer, possesses both distinction and grace. The bookis a delightful combination of romance and satire, and the heroine'scrime is treated in the most picturesque manner possible. 

Marcella Grace tells of modern life in Ireland, and is one of the bestbooks Miss Mulholland has ever published. In its artistic reserve, andthe perfect simplicity of its style, it is an excellent model for alllady-novelists to follow, and the scene where the heroine finds the man, who has been sent to shoot her, lying fever-stricken behind a hedge withhis gun by his side, is really remarkable. Nor could anything be betterthan Miss Mulholland's treatment of external nature. She never shrieksover scenery like a tourist, nor wearies us with sunsets like the Scotchschool; but all through her book there is a subtle atmosphere of purplehills and silent moorland; she makes us live with nature and not merelylook at it. 

The accomplished authoress of Soap was once compared to George Eliot bythe Court Journal, and to Carlyle by the Daily News, but we fear that wecannot compete with our contemporaries in these daring comparisons. Herpresent book is very clever, rather vulgar, and contains some fineexamples of bad French. 

As for A Marked Man, That Winter Night, and Driven Home, the first showssome power of description and treatment, but is sadly incomplete; thesecond is quite unworthy of any man of letters, and the third isabsolutely silly. We sincerely hope that a few more novels like thesewill be published, as the public will then find out that a bad book isvery dear at a shilling. 

(1) Injury and Insult. By Fedor Dostoieffski. Translated from theRussian by Frederick Whishaw. (Vizetelly and Co. )

(2) The Willow Garth. By W. M. Hardinge. (Bentley and Son. )

(3) Marcella Grace. By Rosa Mulholland. (Macmillan and Co. )

(4) Soap. By Constance MacEwen. (Arrowsmith. )

(5) A Marked Man. By Faucet Streets. (Hamilton and Adams. )

(6) That Winter Night. By Robert Buchanan. (Arrowsmith. )

(7) Driven Home. By Evelyn Owen. (Arrowsmith. )

SOME NOVELS

(Saturday Review, May 7, 1887. )

The only form of fiction in which real characters do not seem out ofplace is history. In novels they are detestable, and Miss Bayle'sRomance is entirely spoiled as a realistic presentation of life by theauthor's attempt to introduce into her story a whole mob of moderncelebrities and notorieties, including the Heir Apparent and Mr. EdmundYates. The identity of the latter personage is delicately veiled underthe pseudonym of 'Mr. Atlas, editor of the World, ' but the former appearsas 'The Prince of Wales' pur et simple, and is represented as spendinghis time yachting in the Channel and junketing at Homburg with a second-rate American family who, by the way, always address him as 'Prince, ' andshow in other respects an ignorance that even their ignorance cannotexcuse. Indeed, His Royal Highness is no mere spectator of the story; heis one of the chief actors in it, and it is through his influence thatthe noisy Chicago belle, whose lack of romance gives the book its title, achieves her chief social success. As for the conversation with whichthe Prince is credited, it is of the most amazing kind. We find him onone page gravely discussing the depression of trade with Mr. Ezra P. Bayle, a shoddy American millionaire, who promptly replies, 'Depressionof fiddle-sticks, Prince'; in another passage he naively inquires of thesame shrewd speculator whether the thunderstorms and prairie fires of theWest are still 'on so grand a scale' as when he visited Illinois; and weare told in the second volume that, after contemplating the magnificentview from St. Ives he exclaimed with enthusiasm, 'Surely Mr. Brett musthave had a scene like this in his eye when he painted Britannia's Realm?I never saw anything more beautiful. ' Even Her Majesty figures in thisextraordinary story in spite of the excellent aphorism ne touchez pas ala reine; and when Miss Alma J. Bayle is married to the Duke of Windsor'ssecond son she receives from the hands of royalty not merely thecustomary Cashmere shawl of Court tradition, but also a copy of Diariesin the Highlands inscribed 'To _the_ Lady Plowden Eton, with the kindestwishes of Victoria R. I. ', a mistake that the Queen, of all persons in theworld, is the least likely to have committed. Perhaps, however, we aretreating Miss Bayle's Romance too seriously. The book has really noclaim to be regarded as a novel at all. It is simply a society paragraphexpanded into three volumes and, like most paragraphs of the kind, is inthe worst possible taste. We are not by any means surprised that theauthor, while making free with the names of others, has chosen to concealhis own name; for no reputation could possibly survive the production ofsuch silly, stupid work; but we must say that we are surprised that thisbook has been brought out by the Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majestythe Queen. We do not know what the duties attaching to this office are, but we should not have thought that the issuing of vulgar stories aboutthe Royal Family was one of them. 

From Heather Hills is very pleasant reading indeed. It is healthywithout being affected; and though Mrs. Perks gives us many descriptionsof Scotch scenery we are glad to say that she has not adopted the commonchromo-lithographic method of those popular North British novelists whohave never yet fully realised the difference between colour and colours, and who imagine that by emptying a paint box over every page they canbring before us the magic of mist and mountain, the wonder of sea orglen. Mrs. Perks has a grace and delicacy of touch that is quitecharming, and she can deal with nature without either botanising or beingblatant, which nowadays is a somewhat rare accomplishment. The interestof the story centres on Margaret Dalrymple, a lovely Scotch girl who isbrought to London by her aunt, takes every one by storm and falls in lovewith young Lord Erinwood, who is on the brink of proposing to her when heis dissuaded from doing so by a philosophic man of the world who thinksthat a woodland Artemis is a bad wife for an English peer, and that nowoman who has a habit of saying exactly what she means can possibly geton in smart society. The would-be philosopher is ultimately hoist withhis own petard, as he falls in love himself with Margaret Dalrymple, andas for the weak young hero he is promptly snatched up, rather against hiswill, by a sort of Becky Sharp, who succeeds in becoming Lady Erinwood. However, a convenient railway accident, the deus ex machina of nineteenth-century novels, carries Miss Norma Novello off; and everybody is finallymade happy, except, of course, the philosopher, who gets only a lessonwhere he wanted to get love. There is just one part of the novel towhich we must take exception. The whole story of Alice Morgan is notmerely needlessly painful, but it is of very little artistic value. Atragedy may be the basis of a story, but it should never be simply acasual episode. At least, if it is so, it entirely fails to produce anyartistic effect. We hope, too, that in Mrs. Perks's next novel she willnot allow her hero to misquote English poetry. This is a privilegereserved for Mrs. Malaprop. 

A constancy that lasts through three volumes is often rather tedious, sothat we are glad to make the acquaintance of Miss Lilian Ufford, theheroine of Mrs. Houston's A Heart on Fire. This young lady begins bybeing desperately in love with Mr. Frank Thorburn, a strugglingschoolmaster, and ends by being desperately in love with Colonel Dallas, a rich country gentleman who spends most of his time and his money inpreaching a crusade against beer. After she gets engaged to the Colonelshe discovers that Mr. Thorburn is in reality Lord Netherby's son andheir, and for the moment she seems to have a true woman's regret athaving given up a pretty title; but all ends well, and the story isbrightly and pleasantly told. The Colonel is a middle-aged Romeo of themost impassioned character, and as it is his heart that is 'on fire, ' hemay serve as a psychological pendant to La Femme de Quarante Ans. 

Mr. G. Manville Fenn's A Bag of Diamonds belongs to the Drury Lane Schoolof Fiction and is a sort of fireside melodrama for the family circle. Itis evidently written to thrill Bayswater, and no doubt Bayswater will bethrilled. Indeed, there is a great deal that is exciting in the book, and the scene in which a kindly policeman assists two murderers to conveytheir unconscious victim into a four-wheeled cab, under the impressionthat they are a party of guests returning from a convivial supper inBloomsbury, is quite excellent of its kind, and, on the whole, not tooimprobable, considering that shilling literature is always making demandson our credulity without ever appealing to our imagination. 

The Great Hesper, by Mr. Frank Barrett, has at least the merit ofintroducing into fiction an entirely new character. The villain isNyctalops, and, though we are not prepared to say that there is anynecessary connection between Nyctalopy and crime, we are quite ready toaccept Mr. Barrett's picture of Jan Van Hoeck as an interesting exampleof the modern method of dealing with life. For, Pathology is rapidlybecoming the basis of sensational literature, and in art, as in politics, there is a great future for monsters. What a Nyctalops is we leave Mr. Barrett to explain. His novel belongs to a class of book that manypeople might read once for curiosity but nobody could read a second timefor pleasure. 

A Day after the Fair is an account of a holiday tour through Scotlandtaken by two young barristers, one of whom rescues a pretty girl fromdrowning, falls in love with her, and is rewarded for his heroism byseeing her married to his friend. The idea of the book is not bad, butthe treatment is very unsatisfactory, and combines the triviality of thetourist with the dulness of good intentions. 

'Mr. Winter' is always amusing and audacious, though we cannot say thatwe entirely approve of the names he gives to his stories. Bootle's Babywas a masterpiece, but Houp-la was a terrible title, and That Imp is notmuch better. The book, however, is undoubtedly clever, and the Imp inquestion is not a Nyctalops nor a specimen for a travelling museum, but avery pretty girl who, because an officer has kissed her without anyserious matrimonial intentions, exerts all her fascinations to bring theunfortunate Lovelace to her feet and, having succeeded in doing so, promptly rejects him with a virtuous indignation that is as delightful asit is out of place. We must confess that we have a good deal of sympathyfor 'Driver' Dallas, of the Royal Horse, who suffers fearful agonies atwhat he imagines is a heartless flirtation on the part of the lady of hisdreams; but the story is told from the Imp's point of view, and as suchwe must accept it. There is a very brilliant description of a battle inthe Soudan, and the account of barrack life is, of course, admirable. Soadmirable indeed is it that we hope that 'Mr. Winter' will soon turn hisattention to new topics and try to handle fresh subjects. It would besad if such a clever and observant writer became merely the garrison hackof literature. We would also earnestly beg 'Mr. Winter' not to writefoolish prefaces about unappreciative critics; for it is onlymediocrities and old maids who consider it a grievance to bemisunderstood. 

(1) Miss Bayle's Romance: A Story of To-Day. (Bentley and Son, Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen. )

(2) From Heather Hills. By Mrs. J. Hartley Perks. (Hurst and Blackett. )

(3) A Heart on Fire. By Mrs. Houston. (F. V. White and Co. )

(4) A Bag of Diamonds. By George Manville Fenn. (Ward and Downey. )

(5) The Great Hesper. By Frank Barrett. (Ward and Downey. )

(6) A Day after the Fair. By William Cairns. (Swan Sonnenschein andCo. )

(7) That Imp. By John Strange Winter, Author of Booties' Baby, etc. (F. V. White and Co. )

THE POETS' CORNER--III

(Pall Mall Gazette, May 30, 1887. )

Such a pseudonym for a poet as 'Glenessa' reminds us of the good old daysof the Della Cruscans, but it would not be fair to attribute Glenessa'spoetry to any known school of literature, either past or present. Whatever qualities it possesses are entirely its own. Glenessa's mostambitious work, and the one that gives the title to his book, is a poeticdrama about the Garden of Eden. The subject is undoubtedly interesting, but the execution can hardly be said to be quite worthy of it. Devils, on account of their inherent wickedness, may be excused for singing--

 Then we'll rally--rally--rally-- Yes, we'll rally--rally O!--

but such scenes as--

 Enter ADAM. 

 ADAM (excitedly). Eve, where art thou?

 EVE (surprised). Oh!

 ADAM (in astonishment). Eve! my God, she's there Beside that fatal tree;

or--

 Enter ADAM and EVE. 

 EVE (in astonishment). Well, is not this surprising?

 ADAM (distracted). It is--

seem to belong rather to the sphere of comedy than to that of seriousverse. Poor Glenessa! the gods have not made him poetical, and we hopehe will abandon his wooing of the muse. He is fitted, not for better, but for other things. 

Vortigern and Rowena is a cantata about the Britons and the Danes. Thereis a Druid priestess who sings of Cynthia and Endymion, and a chorus ofjubilant Vikings. It is charmingly printed, and as a libretto for musicquite above the average. 

As truly religious people are resigned to everything, even to mediocrepoetry, there is no reason at all why Madame Guyon's verses should not bepopular with a large section of the community. Their editor, Mr. Dyer, has reprinted the translations Cowper made for Mr. Bull, added someversions of his own and written a pleasing preface about this gentleseventeenth-century saint whose life was her best, indeed her only truepoem. 

Mr. Pierce has discovered a tenth muse and writes impassioned verses tothe Goddess of Chess whom he apostrophises as 'Sublime Caissa'! Zukertortand Steinitz are his heroes, and he is as melodious on mates as he isgraceful on gambits. We are glad to say, however, that he has othersubjects, and one of his poems beginning:

 Cedar boxes deeply cut, China bowls of quaint device, Heap'd with rosy leaves and spice, Violets in old volumes shut--

is very dainty and musical. 

Mr. Clifford Harrison is well known as the most poetic of our reciters, but as a writer himself of poetry he is not so famous. Yet his littlevolume In Hours of Leisure contains some charming pieces, and many of theshort fourteen-line poems are really pretty, though they are verydefective in form. Indeed, of form Mr. Harrison is curiously careless. Such rhymes as 'calm' and 'charm, ' 'baize' and 'place, ' 'jeu' and 'knew, 'are quite dreadful, while 'operas' and 'stars, ' 'Gautama' and 'afar' aretoo bad even for Steinway Hall. Those who have Keats's genius may borrowKeats's cockneyisms, but from minor poets we have a right to expect someregard to the ordinary technique of verse. However, if Mr. Harrison hasnot always form, at least he has always feeling. He has a wonderfulcommand over all the egotistic emotions, is quite conscious of theartistic value of remorse, and displays a sincere sympathy with his ownmoments of sadness, playing upon his moods as a young lady plays upon thepiano. Now and then we come across some delicate descriptive touches, such as

 The cuckoo knew its latest day had come, And told its name once more to all the hills, and whenever Mr. Harrison writes about nature he is certainly pleasingand picturesque but, as a rule, he is over-anxious about himself andforgets that the personal expression of joy or sorrow is not poetry, though it may afford excellent material for a sentimental diary. 

The daily increasing class of readers that likes unintelligible poetryshould study AEonial. It is in many ways a really remarkable production. Very fantastic, very daring, crowded with strange metaphor and clouded bymonstrous imagery, it has a sort of turbid splendour about it, and shouldthe author some day add meaning to his music he may give us a true workof art. At present he hardly realises that an artist should bearticulate. 

Seymour's Inheritance is a short novel in blank verse. On the whole, itis very harmless both in manner and matter, but we must protest againstsuch lines as

 And in the windows of his heart the blinds Of happiness had been drawn down by Grief, for a simile committing suicide is always a depressing spectacle. Someof the other poems are so simple and modest that we hope Mr. Ross willnot carry out his threat of issuing a 'more pretentious volume. 'Pretentious volumes of poetry are very common and very worthless. 

Mr. Brodie's Lyrics of the Sea are spirited and manly, and show a certainfreedom of rhythmical movement, pleasant in days of wooden verse. He isat his best, however, in his sonnets. Their architecture is not alwaysof the finest order but, here and there, one meets with lines that aregraceful and felicitous. 

 Like silver swallows on a summer morn Cutting the air with momentary wings, is pretty, and on flowers Mr. Brodie writes quite charmingly. The onlythoroughly bad piece in the book is The Workman's Song. Nothing can besaid in favour of

 Is there a bit of blue, boys? Is there a bit of blue? In heaven's leaden hue, boys? 'Tis hope's eye peeping through . . . 

for optimism of this kind is far more dispiriting than Schopenhauer orHartmann at their worst, nor are there really any grounds for supposingthat the British workman enjoys third-rate poetry. 

(1) The Discovery and Other Poems. By Glenessa. (National PublishingCo. )

(2) Vortigern and Rowena: A Dramatic Cantata. By Edwin Ellis Griffin. (Hutchings and Crowsley. )

(3) The Poems of Madame de la Mothe Guyon. Edited and arranged by theRev. A. Saunders Dyer, M. A. (Bryce and Son. )

(4) Stanzas and Sonnets. By J. Pierce, M. A. (Longmans, Green and Co. )

(5) In Hours of Leisure. By Clifford Harrison. (Kegan Paul. )

(6) AEonial. By the Author of The White Africans. (Elliot Stock. )

(7) Seymour's Inheritance. By James Ross. (Arrowsmith. )

(8) Lyrics of the Sea. By E. H. Brodie. (Bell and Sons. )

MR. PATER'S IMAGINARY PORTRAITS

(Pall Mall Gazette, June 11, 1887. )

To convey ideas through the medium of images has always been the aim ofthose who are artists as well as thinkers in literature, and it is to adesire to give a sensuous environment to intellectual concepts that weowe Mr. Pater's last volume. For these Imaginary or, as we should preferto call them, Imaginative Portraits of his, form a series of philosophicstudies in which the philosophy is tempered by personality, and thethought shown under varying conditions of mood and manner, the verypermanence of each principle gaining something through the change andcolour of the life through which it finds expression. The mostfascinating of all these pictures is undoubtedly that of Sebastian VanStorck. The account of Watteau is perhaps a little too fanciful, and thedescription of him as one who was 'always a seeker after something in theworld, that is there in no satisfying measure, or not at all, ' seems tous more applicable to him who saw Mona Lisa sitting among the rocks thanto the gay and debonair peintre des fetes galantes. But Sebastian, thegrave young Dutch philosopher, is charmingly drawn. From the firstglimpse we get of him, skating over the water-meadows with his plume ofsquirrel's tail and his fur muff, in all the modest pleasantness ofboyhood, down to his strange death in the desolate house amid the sandsof the Helder, we seem to see him, to know him, almost to hear the lowmusic of his voice. He is a dreamer, as the common phrase goes, and yethe is poetical in this sense, that his theorems shape life for him, directly. Early in youth he is stirred by a fine saying of Spinoza, andsets himself to realise the ideal of an intellectual disinterestedness, separating himself more and more from the transient world of sensation, accident and even affection, till what is finite and relative becomes ofno interest to him, and he feels that as nature is but a thought of his, so he himself is but a passing thought of God. This conception, of thepower of a mere metaphysical abstraction over the mind of one sofortunately endowed for the reception of the sensible world, isexceedingly delightful, and Mr. Pater has never written a more subtlepsychological study, the fact that Sebastian dies in an attempt to savethe life of a little child giving to the whole story a touch of poignantpathos and sad irony. 

Denys l'Auxerrois is suggested by a figure found, or said to be found, onsome old tapestries in Auxerre, the figure of a 'flaxen and flowerycreature, sometimes wellnigh naked among the vine-leaves, sometimesmuffled in skins against the cold, sometimes in the dress of a monk, butalways with a strong impress of real character and incident from theveritable streets' of the town itself. From this strange design Mr. Pater has fashioned a curious mediaeval myth of the return of Dionysusamong men, a myth steeped in colour and passion and old romance, full ofwonder and full of worship, Denys himself being half animal and half god, making the world mad with a new ecstasy of living, stirring the artistssimply by his visible presence, drawing the marvel of music from reed andpipe, and slain at last in a stage-play by those who had loved him. Inits rich affluence of imagery this story is like a picture by Mantegna, and indeed Mantegna might have suggested the description of the pageantin which Denys rides upon a gaily-painted chariot, in soft silken raimentand, for head-dress, a strange elephant scalp with gilded tusks. 

If Denys l'Auxerrois symbolises the passion of the senses and SebastianVan Storck the philosophic passion, as they certainly seem to do, thoughno mere formula or definition can adequately express the freedom andvariety of the life that they portray, the passion for the imaginativeworld of art is the basis of the story of Duke Carl of Rosenmold. DukeCarl is not unlike the late King of Bavaria, in his love of France, hisadmiration for the Grand Monarque and his fantastic desire to amaze andto bewilder, but the resemblance is possibly only a chance one. In factMr. Pater's young hero is the precursor of the Aufklarung of the lastcentury, the German precursor of Herder and Lessing and Goethe himself, and finds the forms of art ready to his hand without any national spiritto fill them or make them vital and responsive. He too dies, trampled todeath by the soldiers of the country he so much admired, on the night ofhis marriage with a peasant girl, the very failure of his life lendinghim a certain melancholy grace and dramatic interest. 

On the whole, then, this is a singularly attractive book. Mr. Pater isan intellectual impressionist. He does not weary us with any definitedoctrine or seek to suit life to any formal creed. He is always lookingfor exquisite moments and, when he has found them, he analyses them withdelicate and delightful art and then passes on, often to the oppositepole of thought or feeling, knowing that every mood has its own qualityand charm and is justified by its mere existence. He has taken thesensationalism of Greek philosophy and made it a new method of artcriticism. As for his style, it is curiously ascetic. Now and then, wecome across phrases with a strange sensuousness of expression, as when hetells us how Denys l'Auxerrois, on his return from a long journey, 'ateflesh for the first time, tearing the hot, red morsels with his delicatefingers in a kind of wild greed, ' but such passages are rare. Asceticismis the keynote of Mr. Pater's prose; at times it is almost too severe inits self-control and makes us long for a little more freedom. Forindeed, the danger of such prose as his is that it is apt to becomesomewhat laborious. Here and there, one is tempted to say of Mr. Paterthat he is 'a seeker after something in language, that is there in nosatisfying measure, or not at all. ' The continual preoccupation withphrase and epithet has its drawbacks as well as its virtues. And yet, when all is said, what wonderful prose it is, with its subtlepreferences, its fastidious purity, its rejection of what is common orordinary! Mr. Pater has the true spirit of selection, the true tact ofomission. If he be not among the greatest prose writers of ourliterature he is, at least, our greatest artist in prose; and though itmay be admitted that the best style is that which seems an unconsciousresult rather than a conscious aim, still in these latter days whenviolent rhetoric does duty for eloquence and vulgarity usurps the name ofnature, we should be grateful for a style that deliberately aims atperfection of form, that seeks to produce its effect by artistic meansand sets before itself an ideal of grave and chastened beauty. 

Imaginary Portraits. By Walter Pater, M. A. , Fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford. (Macmillan and Co. )

A GOOD HISTORICAL NOVEL

(Pall Mall Gazette, August 8, 1887. )

Most modern Russian novelists look upon the historical novel as a fauxgenre, or a sort of fancy dress ball in literature, a mere puppet show, not a true picture of life. Yet their own history is full of suchwonderful scenes and situations, ready for dramatist or novelist to treatof, that we are not surprised that, in spite of the dogmas of the ecolenaturaliste, Mr. Stephen Coleridge has taken the Russia of the sixteenthcentury as the background for his strange tale. Indeed, there is much tobe said in favour of a form remote from actual experience. Passionitself gains something from picturesqueness of surroundings; distance oftime, unlike distance of space, makes objects larger and more vivid; overthe common things of contemporary life there hangs a mist of familiaritythat often makes their meaning obscure. There are also moments when wefeel that but little artistic pleasure is to be gained from the study ofthe modern realistic school. Its works are powerful but they arepainful, and after a time we tire of their harshness, their violence andtheir crudity. They exaggerate the importance of facts and underrate theimportance of fiction. Such, at any rate, is the mood--and what iscriticism itself but a mood?--produced in us by a perusal of Mr. Coleridge's Demetrius. It is the story of a young lad of unknownparentage who is brought up in the household of a Polish noble. He is atall, fair-looking youth, by name Alexis, with a pride of bearing andgrace of manner that seem strange in one of such low station. Suddenlyhe is recognised by an exiled Russian noble as Demetrius, the son of Ivanthe Terrible who was supposed to have been murdered by the usurper Boris. His identity is still further established by a strange cross of sevenemeralds that he wears round his neck, and by a Greek inscription in hisbook of prayers which discloses the secret of his birth and the story ofhis rescue. He himself feels that the blood of kings beats in his veins, and appeals to the nobles of the Polish Diet to espouse his cause. Byhis passionate utterance he makes them acknowledge him as the true Tsarand invades Russia at the head of a large army. The people throng to himfrom every side, and Marfa, the widow of Ivan the Terrible, escapes fromthe convent in which she has been immured by Boris and comes to meet herson. At first she seems not to recognise him, but the music of his voiceand the wonderful eloquence of his pleading win her over, and sheembraces him in presence of the army and admits him to be her child. Theusurper, terrified at the tidings, and deserted by his soldiers, commitssuicide, and Alexis enters Moscow in triumph, and is crowned in theKremlin. Yet he is not the true Demetrius, after all. He is deceivedhimself and he deceives others. Mr. Coleridge has drawn his characterwith delicate subtlety and quick insight, and the scene in which hediscovers that he is no son of Ivan's and has no right to the name heclaims, is exceedingly powerful and dramatic. One point of resemblancedoes exist between Alexis and the real Demetrius. Both of them aremurdered, and with the death of this strange hero Mr. Coleridge ends hisremarkable story. 

On the whole, Mr. Coleridge has written a really good historical noveland may be congratulated on his success. The style is particularlyinteresting, and the narrative parts of the book are deserving of highpraise for their clearness, dignity and sobriety. The speeches andpassages of dialogue are not so fortunate, as they have an awkwardtendency to lapse into bad blank verse. Here, for instance, is a speechprinted by Mr. Coleridge as prose, in which the true music of prose issacrificed to a false metrical system which is at once monotonous andtiresome:

 But Death, who brings us freedom from all falsehood, Who heals the heart when the physician fails, Who comforts all whom life cannot console, Who stretches out in sleep the tired watchers; He takes the King and proves him but a beggar! He speaks, and we, deaf to our Maker's voice, Hear and obey the call of our destroyer! Then let us murmur not at anything; For if our ills are curable, 'tis idle, And if they are past remedy, 'tis vain. The worst our strongest enemy can do Is take from us our life, and this indeed Is in the power of the weakest also. 

This is not good prose; it is merely blank verse of an inferior quality, and we hope that Mr. Coleridge in his next novel will not ask us toaccept second-rate poetry as musical prose. For, that Mr. Coleridge is ayoung writer of great ability and culture cannot be doubted and, indeed, in spite of the error we have pointed out, Demetrius remains one of themost fascinating and delightful novels that has appeared this season. 

Demetrius. By the Hon. Stephen Coleridge. (Kegan Paul. )

NEW NOVELS

(Saturday Review, August 20, 1887. )

Teutonic fiction, as a rule, is somewhat heavy and very sentimental; butWerner's Her Son, excellently translated by Miss Tyrrell, is really acapital story and would make a capital play. Old Count Steinruck has twograndsons, Raoul and Michael. The latter is brought up like a peasant'schild, cruelly treated by his grandfather and by the peasant to whosecare he is confided, his mother, the Countess Louis Steinruck, havingmarried an adventurer and a gambler. He is the rough hero of the tale, the Saint Michael of that war with evil which is life; while Raoul, spoiled by his grandfather and his French mother, betrays his country andtarnishes his name. At every step in the narrative these two young mencome into collision. There is a war of character, a clash ofpersonalities. Michael is proud, stern and noble. Raoul is weak, charming and evil. Michael has the world against him and conquers. Raoulhas the world on his side and loses. The whole story is full of movementand life, and the psychology of the characters is displayed by action notby analysis, by deeds not by description. Though there are three longvolumes, we do not tire of the tale. It has truth, passion and power, and there are no better things than these in fiction. 

The interest of Mr. Sale Lloyd's Scamp depends on one of thosemisunderstandings which is the stock-in-trade of second-rate novelists. Captain Egerton falls in love with Miss Adela Thorndyke, who is a sort offeeble echo of some of Miss Broughton's heroines, but will not marry herbecause he has seen her talking with a young man who lives in theneighbourhood and is one of his oldest friends. We are sorry to say thatMiss Thorndyke remains quite faithful to Captain Egerton, and goes so faras to refuse for his sake the rector of the parish, a local baronet, anda real live lord. There are endless pages of five o'clock tea-prattleand a good many tedious characters. Such novels as Scamp are possiblymore easy to write than they are to read. 

James Hepburn belongs to a very different class of book. It is not amere chaos of conversation, but a strong story of real life, and itcannot fail to give Miss Veitch a prominent position among modernnovelists. James Hepburn is the Free Church minister of Mossgiel, andpresides over a congregation of pleasant sinners and serious hypocrites. Two people interest him, Lady Ellinor Farquharson and a handsome youngvagabond called Robert Blackwood. Through his efforts to save LadyEllinor from shame and ruin he is accused of being her lover; through hisintimacy with Robert Blackwood he is suspected of having murdered a younggirl in his household. A meeting of the elders and office-bearers of thechurch is held to consider the question of the minister's resignation, atwhich, to the amazement of every one, Robert Blackwood comes forth andconfesses to the crime of which Hepburn is accused. The whole story isexceedingly powerful, and there is no extravagant use of the Scotchdialect, which is a great advantage to the reader. 

The title-page of Tiff informs us that it was written by the author ofLucy; or, a Great Mistake, which seems to us a form of anonymity, as wehave never heard of the novel in question. We hope, however, that it wasbetter than Tiff, for Tiff is undeniably tedious. It is the story of abeautiful girl who has many lovers and loses them, and of an ugly girlwho has one lover and keeps him. It is a rather confused tale, and thereare far too many love-scenes in it. If this 'Favourite Fiction' Series, in which Tiff appears, is to be continued, we would entreat the publisherto alter the type and the binding. The former is far too small: while, as for the cover, it is of sham crocodile leather adorned with a bluespider and a vulgar illustration of the heroine in the arms of a youngman in evening dress. Dull as Tiff is--and its dulness is quiteremarkable--it does not deserve so detestable a binding. 

(1) Her Son. Translated from the German of E. Werner by ChristinaTyrrell. (Richard Bentley and Son. )

(2) Scamp. By J. Sale Lloyd. (White and Co. )

(3) James Hepburn. By Sophie Veitch. (Alexander Gardner. )

(4) Tiff. By the Author of Lucy; or, A Great Mistake. 'FavouriteFiction' Series. (William Stevens. )

TWO BIOGRAPHIES OF KEATS

(Pall Mall Gazette, September 27, 1887. )

A poet, said Keats once, 'is the most unpoetical of all God's creatures, 'and whether the aphorism be universally true or not, this is certainlythe impression produced by the two last biographies that have appeared ofKeats himself. It cannot be said that either Mr. Colvin or Mr. WilliamRossetti makes us love Keats more or understand him better. In boththese books there is much that is like 'chaff in the mouth, ' and in Mr. Rossetti's there is not a little that is like 'brass on the palate. ' Toa certain degree this is, no doubt, inevitable nowadays. Everybody paysa penalty for peeping through keyholes, and the keyhole and thebackstairs are essential parts of the method of the modern biographers. It is only fair, however, to state at the outset that Mr. Colvin has donehis work much better than Mr. Rossetti. The account Mr. Colvin gives ofKeats's boyhood, for instance, is very pleasing, and so is the sketch ofKeats's circle of friends, both Leigh Hunt and Haydon being admirablydrawn. Here and there, trivial family details are introduced withoutmuch regard to proportion, and the posthumous panegyrics of devotedfriends are not really of so much value, in helping us to form any trueestimate of Keats's actual character, as Mr. Colvin seems to imagine. Wehave no doubt that when Bailey wrote to Lord Houghton that common-senseand gentleness were Keats's two special characteristics the worthyArchdeacon meant extremely well, but we prefer the real Keats, with hispassionate wilfulness, his fantastic moods and his fine inconsistence. Part of Keats's charm as a man is his fascinating incompleteness. We donot want him reduced to a sand-paper smoothness or made perfect by theaddition of popular virtues. Still, if Mr. Colvin has not given us avery true picture of Keats's character, he has certainly told the storyof his life in a pleasant and readable manner. He may not write with theease and grace of a man of letters, but he is never pretentious and notoften pedantic. 

Mr. Rossetti's book is a great failure. To begin with, Mr. Rossetticommits the great mistake of separating the man from the artist. Thefacts of Keats's life are interesting only when they are shown in theirrelation to his creative activity. The moment they are isolated they areeither uninteresting or painful. Mr. Rossetti complains that the earlypart of Keats's life is uneventful and the latter part depressing, butthe fault lies with the biographer, not with the subject. 

The book opens with a detailed account of Keats's life, in which hespares us nothing, from what he calls the 'sexual misadventure at Oxford'down to the six weeks' dissipation after the appearance of the Blackwoodarticle and the hysterical and morbid ravings of the dying man. Nodoubt, most if not all of the things Mr. Rossetti tells us are facts; butthere is neither tact shown in the selection that is made of the factsnor sympathy in the use to which they are put. When Mr. Rossetti writesof the man he forgets the poet, and when he criticises the poet he showsthat he does not understand the man. His first error, as we have said, is isolating the life from the work; his second error is his treatment ofthe work itself. Take, for instance, his criticism of that wonderful Odeto a Nightingale, with all its marvellous magic of music, colour andform. He begins by saying that 'the first point of weakness' in the poemis the 'surfeit of mythological allusions, ' a statement which isabsolutely untrue, as out of the eight stanzas of the poem only threecontain any mythological allusions at all, and of these not one is eitherforced or remote. Then coming to the second verse, Oh for a draught of vintage, that hath been Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth, Tasting of Flora and the country-green, Dance, and Provencal song, and sunburnt mirth!

Mr. Rossetti exclaims in a fine fit of 'Blue Ribbon' enthusiasm: 'Surelynobody wants wine as a preparation for enjoying a nightingale's music, whether in a literal or in a fanciful relation'! 'To call wine "thetrue, the blushful Hippocrene" . . . Seems' to him 'both stilted andrepulsive'; 'the phrase "with beaded bubbles winking at the brim" is(though picturesque) trivial'; 'the succeeding image, "Not charioted byBacchus and his pards"' is 'far worse'; while such an expression as'light-winged Dryad of the trees' is an obvious pleonasm, for Dryadreally means Oak-nymph! As for that superb burst of passion, Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird! No hungry generations tread thee down; The voice I hear this passing night was heard In ancient days by emperor and clown:

Mr. Rossetti tells us that it is a palpable, or rather 'palpaple (sic)fact that this address . . . Is a logical solecism, ' as men live longerthan nightingales. As Mr. Colvin makes very much the same criticism, talking of 'a breach of logic which is also . . . A flaw in the poetry, 'it may be worth while to point out to these two last critics of Keats'swork that what Keats meant to convey was the contrast between thepermanence of beauty and the change and decay of human life, an ideawhich receives its fullest expression in the Ode on a Grecian Urn. Nordo the other poems fare much better at Mr. Rossetti's hands. The fineinvocation in Isabella--

 Moan hither, all ye syllables of woe, From the deep throat of sad Melpomene! Through bronzed lyre in tragic order go, And touch the strings into a mystery, seems to him 'a fadeur'; the Indian Bacchante of the fourth book ofEndymion he calls a 'sentimental and beguiling wine-bibber, ' and, as forEndymion himself, he declares that he cannot understand 'how his humanorganism, _with respirative and digestive processes_, continues toexist, ' and gives us his own idea of how Keats should have treated thesubject. An eminent French critic once exclaimed in despair, 'Je trouvedes physiologistes partout!'; but it has been reserved for Mr. Rossettito speculate on Endymion's digestion, and we readily accord to him allthe distinction of the position. Even where Mr. Rossetti seeks topraise, he spoils what he praises. To speak of Hyperion as 'a monumentof Cyclopean architecture in verse' is bad enough, but to call it 'aStonehenge of reverberance' is absolutely detestable; nor do we learnmuch about The Eve of St. Mark by being told that its 'simplicity is full-blooded as well as quaint. ' What is the meaning, also, of stating thatKeats's Notes on Shakespeare are 'somewhat strained and _bloated_'? andis there nothing better to be said of Madeline in The Eve of St. Agnesthan that 'she is made a very charming and loveable figure, _although shedoes nothing very particular except to undress without looking behindher, and to elope_'? There is no necessity to follow Mr. Rossetti anyfurther as he flounders about through the quagmire that he has made forhis own feet. A critic who can say that 'not many of Keats's poems arehighly admirable' need not be too seriously treated. Mr. Rossetti is anindustrious man and a painstaking writer, but he entirely lacks thetemper necessary for the interpretation of such poetry as was written byJohn Keats. 

It is pleasant to turn again to Mr. Colvin, who criticises always withmodesty and often with acumen. We do not agree with him when he acceptsMrs. Owens's theory of a symbolic and allegoric meaning underlyingEndymion, his final judgment on Keats as 'the most Shaksperean spiritthat has lived since Shakspere' is not very fortunate, and we aresurprised to find him suggesting, on the evidence of a rather silly storyof Severn's, that Sir Walter Scott was privy to the Blackwood article. There is nothing, however, about his estimate of the poet's work that isharsh, irritating or uncouth. The true Marcellus of English song has notyet found his Virgil, but Mr. Colvin makes a tolerable Statius. 

(1) Keats. By Sidney Colvin. 'English Men of Letters' Series. (Macmillan and Co. )

(2) Life of John Keats. By William Michael Rossetti. 'Great Writers'Series. (Walter Scott. )

A SCOTCHMAN ON SCOTTISH POETRY

(Pall Mall Gazette, October 24, 1887. )

A distinguished living critic, born south of the Tweed, once whispered inconfidence to a friend that he believed that the Scotch knew really verylittle about their own national literature. He quite admitted that theylove their 'Robbie Burns' and their 'Sir Walter' with a patrioticenthusiasm that makes them extremely severe upon any unfortunate southronwho ventures to praise either in their presence, but he claimed that theworks of such great national poets as Dunbar, Henryson and Sir DavidLyndsay are sealed books to the majority of the reading public inEdinburgh, Aberdeen and Glasgow, and that few Scotch people have any ideaof the wonderful outburst of poetry that took place in their countryduring the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, at a time when there waslittle corresponding development in England. Whether this terribleaccusation be absolutely true, or not, it is needless to discuss atpresent. It is probable that the archaism of language alone will alwaysprevent a poet like Dunbar from being popular in the ordinary acceptationof the word. Professor Veitch's book, however, shows that there aresome, at any rate, in the 'land o' cakes' who can admire and appreciatetheir marvellous early singers, and whose admiration for The Lord of theIsles and the verses To a Mountain Daisy does not blind them to theexquisite beauties of The Testament of Cresseid, The Thistle and theRose, and the Dialog betwix Experience and ane Courteour. 

Taking as the subject of his two interesting volumes the feeling forNature in Scottish Poetry, Professor Veitch starts with a historicaldisquisition on the growth of the sentiment in humanity. The primitivestate he regards as being simply a sort of 'open-air feeling. ' The chiefsources of pleasure are the warmth of the sunshine, the cool of thebreeze and the general fresh aspect of the earth and sky, connectingitself with a consciousness of life and sensuous enjoyment; whiledarkness, storm and cold are regarded as repulsive. This is followed bythe pastoral stage in which we find the love of green meadows and ofshady trees and of all things that make life pleasant and comfortable. This, again, by the stage of agriculture, the era of the war with earth, when men take pleasure in the cornfield and in the garden, but hateeverything that is opposed to tillage, such as woodland and rock, or thatcannot be subdued to utility, such as mountain and sea. Finally we cometo the pure nature-feeling, the free delight in the mere contemplation ofthe external world, the joy in sense-impressions irrespective of allquestions of Nature's utility and beneficence. But here the growth doesnot stop. The Greek, desiring to make Nature one with humanity, peopledthe grove and hillside with beautiful and fantastic forms, saw the godhiding in the thicket, and the naiad drifting with the stream. Themodern Wordsworthian, desiring to make man one with Nature, finds inexternal things 'the symbols of our inner life, the workings of a spiritakin to our own. ' There is much that is suggestive in these earlychapters of Professor Veitch's book, but we cannot agree with him in theview he takes of the primitive attitude towards Nature. The 'open-airfeeling, ' of which he talks, seems to us comparatively modern. Theearliest Nature-myths tell us, not of man's 'sensuous enjoyment' ofNature, but of the terror that Nature inspires. Nor are darkness andstorm regarded by the primitive man as 'simply repulsive'; they are tohim divine and supernatural things, full of wonder and full of awe. Somereference, also, should have been made to the influence of towns on thedevelopment of the nature-feeling, for, paradox though it may seem, it isnone the less true that it is largely to the creation of cities that weowe the love of the country. 

Professor Veitch is on a safer ground when he comes to deal with thegrowth and manifestations of this feeling as displayed in Scotch poetry. The early singers, as he points out, had all the mediaeval love ofgardens, all the artistic delight in the bright colours of flowers andthe pleasant song of birds, but they felt no sympathy for the wildsolitary moorland, with its purple heather, its grey rocks and its wavingbracken. Montgomerie was the first to wander out on the banks and braesand to listen to the music of the burns, and it was reserved for Drummondof Hawthornden to sing of flood and forest and to notice the beauty ofthe mists on the hillside and the snow on the mountain tops. Then cameAllan Ramsay with his honest homely pastorals; Thomson, who writes aboutNature like an eloquent auctioneer, and yet was a keen observer, with afresh eye and an open heart; Beattie, who approached the problems thatWordsworth afterwards solved; the great Celtic epic of Ossian, such animportant factor in the romantic movement of Germany and France;Fergusson, to whom Burns is so much indebted; Burns himself, Leyden, SirWalter Scott, James Hogg and (longo intervallo) Christopher North and thelate Professor Shairp. On nearly all these poets Professor Veitch writeswith fine judgment and delicate feeling, and even his admiration forBurns has nothing absolutely aggressive about it. He shows, however, acertain lack of the true sense of literary proportion in the amount ofspace he devotes to the two last writers on our list. Christopher Northwas undoubtedly an interesting personality to the Edinburgh of his day, but he has not left behind him anything of real permanent value. Therewas too much noise in his criticism, too little music in his poetry. Asfor Professor Shairp, looked on as a critic he was a tragic example ofthe unfortunate influence of Wordsworth, for he was always confusingethical with aesthetical questions, and never had the slightest idea howto approach such poets as Shelley and Rossetti whom it was his mission tointerpret to young Oxford in his later years; {189} while, considered asa poet, he deserves hardly more than a passing reference. ProfessorVeitch gravely tells us that one of the descriptions of Kilmahoe is 'notsurpassed in the language for real presence, felicity of epithet, andpurity of reproduction, ' and statements of this kind serve to remind usof the fact that a criticism which is based on patriotism is alwaysprovincial in its result. But it is only fair to add that it is veryrarely that Professor Veitch is so extravagant and so grotesque. Hisjudgment and taste are, as a rule, excellent, and his book is, on thewhole, a very fascinating and delightful contribution to the history ofliterature. 

The Feeling for Nature in Scottish Poetry. By John Veitch, Professor ofLogic and Rhetoric in the University of Glasgow. (Blackwood and Son. )

LITERARY AND OTHER NOTES--I

(Woman's World, November 1887. )

The Princess Christian's translation of the Memoirs of Wilhelmine, Margravine of Baireuth, is a most fascinating and delightful book. TheMargravine and her brother, Frederick the Great, were, as the Princessherself points out in an admirably written introduction, 'among the firstof those questioning minds that strove after spiritual freedom' in thelast century. 'They had studied, ' says the Princess, 'the Englishphilosophers, Newton, Locke, and Shaftesbury, and were roused toenthusiasm by the writings of Voltaire and Rousseau. Their whole livesbore the impress of the influence of French thought on the burningquestions of the day. In the eighteenth century began that greatstruggle of philosophy against tyranny and worn-out abuses whichculminated in the French Revolution. The noblest minds were engaged inthe struggle, and, like most reformers, they pushed their conclusions toextremes, and too often lost sight of the need of a due proportion inthings. The Margravine's influence on the intellectual development ofher country is untold. She formed at Baireuth a centre of culture andlearning which had before been undreamt of in Germany. '

The historical value of these Memoirs is, of course, well known. Carlylespeaks of them as being 'by far the best authority' on the early life ofFrederick the Great. But considered merely as the autobiography of aclever and charming woman, they are no less interesting, and even thosewho care nothing for eighteenth-century politics, and look upon historyitself as an unattractive form of fiction, cannot fail to be fascinatedby the Margravine's wit, vivacity and humour, by her keen powers ofobservation, and by her brilliant and assertive egotism. Not that herlife was by any means a happy one. Her father, to quote the PrincessChristian, 'ruled his family with the same harsh despotism with which heruled his country, taking pleasure in making his power felt by all in themost galling manner, ' and the Margravine and her brother 'had much tosuffer, not only from his ungovernable temper, but also from the realprivations to which they were subjected. ' Indeed, the picture theMargravine gives of the King is quite extraordinary. 'He despised alllearning, ' she writes, 'and wished me to occupy myself with nothing butneedlework and household duties or details. Had he found me writing orreading, he would probably have whipped me. ' He 'considered music acapital offence, and maintained that every one should devote himself toone object: men to the military service, and women to their householdduties. Science and the arts he counted among the "seven deadly sins. "'Sometimes he took to religion, 'and then, ' says the Margravine, 'we livedlike Trappists, to the great grief of my brother and myself. Everyafternoon the King preached a sermon, to which we had to listen asattentively as if it proceeded from an Apostle. My brother and I wereoften seized with such an intense sense of the ridiculous that we burstout laughing, upon which an apostolic curse was poured out on our heads, which we had to accept with a show of humility and penitence. ' Economyand soldiers were his only topics of conversation; his chief socialamusement was to make his guests intoxicated; and as for his temper, theaccounts the Margravine gives of it would be almost incredible if theywere not amply corroborated from other sources. Suetonius has written ofthe strange madness that comes on kings, but even in his melodramaticchronicles there is hardly anything that rivals what the Margravine hasto tell us. Here is one of her pictures of family life at a Royal Courtin the last century, and it is not by any means the worst scene shedescribes:

 On one occasion, when his temper was more than usually bad, he told the Queen that he had received letters from Anspach, in which the Margrave announced his arrival at Berlin for the beginning of May. He was coming there for the purpose of marrying my sister, and one of his ministers would arrive previously with the betrothal ring. My father asked my sister whether she were pleased at this prospect, and how she would arrange her household. Now my sister had always made a point of telling him whatever came into her head, even the greatest home-truths, and he had never taken her outspokenness amiss. On this occasion, therefore, relying on former experience, she answered him as follows: 'When I have a house of my own, I shall take care to have a well-appointed dinner-table, better than yours is, and if I have children of my own, I shall not plague them as you do yours, and force them to eat things they thoroughly dislike!'

 'What is amiss with my dinner-table?' the King enquired, getting very red in the face. 

 'You ask what is the matter with it, ' my sister replied; 'there is not enough on it for us to eat, and what there is is cabbage and carrots, which we detest. ' Her first answer had already angered my father, but now he gave vent to his fury. But instead of punishing my sister he poured it all on my mother, my brother, and myself. To begin with he threw his plate at my brother's head, who would have been struck had he not got out of the way; a second one he threw at me, which I also happily escaped; then torrents of abuse followed these first signs of hostility. He reproached the Queen with having brought up her children so badly. 'You will curse your mother, ' he said to my brother, 'for having made you such a good-for-nothing creature. ' . . . As my brother and I passed near him to leave the room, he hit out at us with his crutch. Happily we escaped the blow; for it would certainly have struck us down, and we at last escaped without harm. 

Yet, as the Princess Christian remarks, 'despite the almost crueltreatment Wilhelmine received from her father, it is noticeable thatthroughout her memoirs she speaks of him with the greatest affection. Shemakes constant reference to his "good heart"'; and says that his faults'were more those of temper than of nature. ' Nor could all the misery andwretchedness of her home life dull the brightness of her intellect. Whatwould have made others morbid, made her satirical. Instead of weepingover her own personal tragedies, she laughs at the general comedy oflife. Here, for instance, is her description of Peter the Great and hiswife, who arrived at Berlin in 1718:

 The Czarina was small, broad, and brown-looking, without the slightest dignity or appearance. You had only to look at her to detect her low origin. She might have passed for a German actress, she had decked herself out in such a manner. Her dress had been bought second-hand, and was trimmed with some dirty looking silver embroidery; the bodice was trimmed with precious stones, arranged in such a manner as to represent the double eagle. She wore a dozen orders; and round the bottom of her dress hung quantities of relics and pictures of saints, which rattled when she walked, and reminded one of a smartly harnessed mule. The orders too made a great noise, knocking against each other. 

 The Czar, on the other hand, was tall and well grown, with a handsome face, but his expression was coarse, and impressed one with fear. He wore a simple sailor's dress. His wife, who spoke German very badly, called her court jester to her aid, and spoke Russian with her. This poor creature was a Princess Gallizin, who had been obliged to undertake this sorry office to save her life, as she had been mixed up in a conspiracy against the Czar, and had twice been flogged with the knout!

 * * * * * *

 The following day [the Czar] visited all the sights of Berlin, amongst others the very curious collection of coins and antiques. Amongst these last named was a statue, representing a heathen god. It was anything but attractive, but was the most valuable in the collection. The Czar admired it very much, and insisted on the Czarina kissing it. On her refusing, he said to her in bad German that she should lose her head if she did not at once obey him. Being terrified at the Czar's anger she immediately complied with his orders without the least hesitation. The Czar asked the King to give him this and other statues, a request which he could not refuse. The same thing happened about a cupboard, inlaid with amber. It was the only one of its kind, and had cost King Frederick I. An enormous sum, and the consternation was general on its having to be sent to Petersburg. 

 This barbarous Court happily left after two days. The Queen rushed at once to Monbijou, which she found in a state resembling that of the fall of Jerusalem. I never saw such a sight. Everything was destroyed, so that the Queen was obliged to rebuild the whole house. 

Nor are the Margravine's descriptions of her reception as a bride in theprincipality of Baireuth less amusing. Hof was the first town she cameto, and a deputation of nobles was waiting there to welcome her. This isher account of them:

 Their faces would have frightened little children, and, to add to their beauty, they had arranged their hair to resemble the wigs that were then in fashion. Their dresses clearly denoted the antiquity of their families, as they were composed of heirlooms, and were cut accordingly, so that most of them did not fit. In spite of their costumes being the 'Court Dresses, ' the gold and silver trimmings were so black that you had a difficulty in making out of what they were made. The manners of these nobles suited their faces and their clothes. They might have passed for peasants. I could scarcely restrain my laughter when I first beheld these strange figures. I spoke to each in turn, but none of them understood what I said, and their replies sounded to me like Hebrew, because the dialect of the Empire is quite different from that spoken in Brandenburg. 

 The clergy also presented themselves. These were totally different creatures. Round their necks they wore great ruffs, which resembled washing baskets. They spoke very slowly, so that I might be able to understand them better. They said the most foolish things, and it was only with much difficulty that I was able to prevent myself from laughing. At last I got rid of all these people, and we sat down to dinner. I tried my best to converse with those at table, but it was useless. At last I touched on agricultural topics, and then they began to thaw. I was at once informed of all their different farmsteads and herds of cattle. An almost interesting discussion took place as to whether the oxen in the upper part of the country were fatter than those in the lowlands. 

 * * * * *

 I was told that as the next day was Sunday, I must spend it at Hof, and listen to a sermon. Never before had I heard such a sermon! The clergyman began by giving us an account of all the marriages that had taken place from Adam's time to that of Noah. We were spared no detail, so that the gentlemen all laughed and the poor ladies blushed. The dinner went off as on the previous day. In the afternoon all the ladies came to pay me their respects. Gracious heavens! What ladies, too! They were all as ugly as the gentlemen, and their head-dresses were so curious that swallows might have built their nests in them. 

As for Baireuth itself, and its petty Court, the picture she gives of itis exceedingly curious. Her father-in-law, the reigning Margrave, was anarrow-minded mediocrity, whose conversation 'resembled that of a sermonread aloud for the purpose of sending the listener to sleep, ' and he hadonly two topics, Telemachus, and Amelot de la Houssaye's Roman History. The Ministers, from Baron von Stein, who always said 'yes' to everything, to Baron von Voit, who always said 'no, ' were not by any means anintellectual set of men. 'Their chief amusement, ' says the Margravine, 'was drinking from morning till night, ' and horses and cattle were allthey talked about. The palace itself was shabby, decayed and dirty. 'Iwas like a lamb among wolves, ' cries the poor Margravine; 'I was settledin a strange country, at a Court which more resembled a peasant's farm, surrounded by coarse, bad, dangerous, and tiresome people. '

Yet her esprit never deserted her. She is always clever, witty, andentertaining. Her stories about the endless squabbles over precedenceare extremely amusing. The society of her day cared very little for goodmanners, knew, indeed, very little about them, but all questions ofetiquette were of vital importance, and the Margravine herself, thoughshe saw the shallowness of the whole system, was far too proud not toassert her rights when circumstances demanded it, as the description shegives of her visit to the Empress of Germany shows very clearly. Whenthis meeting was first proposed, the Margravine declined positively toentertain the idea. 'There was no precedent, ' she writes, 'of a King'sdaughter and the Empress having met, and I did not know to what rights Iought to lay claim. ' Finally, however, she is induced to consent, butshe lays down three conditions for her reception:

 I desired first of all that the Empress's Court should receive me at the foot of the stairs, secondly, that she should meet me at the door of her bedroom, and, thirdly, that she should offer me an armchair to sit on. 

 * * * * *

 They disputed all day over the conditions I had made. The two first were granted me, but all that could be obtained with respect to the third was, that the Empress would use quite a small armchair, whilst she gave me a chair. 

 Next day I saw this Royal personage. I own that had I been in her place I would have made all the rules of etiquette and ceremony the excuse for not being obliged to appear. The Empress was small and stout, round as a ball, very ugly, and without dignity or manner. Her mind corresponded to her body. She was terribly bigoted, and spent her whole day praying. The old and ugly are generally the Almighty's portion. She received me trembling all over, and was so upset that she could not say a word. 

 After some silence I began the conversation in French. She answered me in her Austrian dialect that she could not speak in that language, and begged I would speak in German. The conversation did not last long, for the Austrian and low Saxon tongues are so different from each other that to those acquainted with only one the other is unintelligible. This is what happened to us. A third person would have laughed at our misunderstandings, for we caught only a word here and there, and had to guess the rest. The poor Empress was such a slave to etiquette that she would have thought it high treason had she spoken to me in a foreign language, though she understood French quite well. 

Many other extracts might be given from this delightful book, but fromthe few that have been selected some idea can be formed of the vivacityand picturesqueness of the Margravine's style. As for her character, itis very well summed up by the Princess Christian, who, while admittingthat she often appears almost heartless and inconsiderate, yet claimsthat, 'taken as a whole, she stands out in marked prominence among themost gifted women of the eighteenth century, not only by her mentalpowers, but by her goodness of heart, her self-sacrificing devotion, andtrue friendship. ' An interesting sequel to her Memoirs would be hercorrespondence with Voltaire, and it is to be hoped that we may shortlysee a translation of these letters from the same accomplished pen towhich we owe the present volume. {198}

* * * * *

Women's Voices is an anthology of the most characteristic poems byEnglish, Scotch and Irish women, selected and arranged by Mrs. WilliamSharp. 'The idea of making this anthology, ' says Mrs. Sharp, in herpreface, 'arose primarily from the conviction that our women-poets hadnever been collectively represented with anything like adequate justice;that the works of many are not so widely known as they deserve to be; andthat at least some fine fugitive poetry could be thus rescued fromoblivion'; and Mrs. Sharp proceeds to claim that the 'selections willfurther emphasise the value of women's work in poetry for those who arealready well acquainted with English Literature, and that they willconvince many it is as possible to form an anthology of "pure poetry"from the writings of women as from those of men. ' It is somewhatdifficult to define what 'pure poetry' really is, but the collection iscertainly extremely interesting, extending, as it does, over nearly threecenturies of our literature. It opens with Revenge, a poem by the'learned, virtuous, and truly noble Ladie, ' Elizabeth Carew, whopublished a Tragedie of Marian, the faire Queene of Iewry, in 1613, fromwhich Revenge is taken. Then come some very pretty verses by Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle, who produced a volume of poems in 1653. They aresupposed to be sung by a sea-goddess, and their fantastic charm and thegraceful wilfulness of their fancy are well worthy of note, as thesefirst stanzas show:

 My cabinets are oyster-shells, In which I keep my Orient pearls; And modest coral I do wear, Which blushes when it touches air. 

 On silvery waves I sit and sing, And then the fish lie listening: Then resting on a rocky stone I comb my hair with fishes' bone;

 The whilst Apollo with his beams Doth dry my hair from soaking streams, His light doth glaze the water's face, And make the sea my looking-glass. 

Then follow Friendship's Mystery, by 'The Matchless Orinda, ' Mrs. Katherine Philips; A Song, by Mrs. Aphra Behn, 'the first English womanwho adopted literature as a profession'; and the Countess of Winchelsea'sNocturnal Reverie. Wordsworth once said that, with the exception of thispoem and Pope's Windsor Forest, 'the poetry of the period interveningbetween Paradise Lost and The Seasons does not contain a single new imageof external nature, ' and though the statement is hardly accurate, as itleaves Gay entirely out of account, it must be admitted that the simplenaturalism of Lady Winchelsea's description is extremely remarkable. Passing on through Mrs. Sharp's collection, we come across poems by LadyGrisell Baillie; by Jean Adams, a poor 'sewing-maid in a Scotch manse, 'who died in the Greenock Workhouse; by Isobel Pagan, 'an Ayrshire lucky, who kept an alehouse, and sold whiskey without a license, ' 'and sang herown songs as a means of subsistence'; by Mrs. Thrale, Dr. Johnson'sfriend; by Mrs. Hunter, the wife of the great anatomist; by the worthyMrs. Barbauld; and by the excellent Mrs. Hannah More. Here is Miss AnnaSeward, 'called by her admirers "the Swan of Lichfield, "' who was soangry with Dr. Darwin for plagiarising some of her verses; Lady AnneBarnard, whose Auld Robin Gray was described by Sir Walter Scott as'worth all the dialogues Corydon and Phyllis have together spoken fromthe days of Theocritus downwards'; Jean Glover, a Scottish weaver'sdaughter, who 'married a strolling player and became the best singer andactor of his troop'; Joanna Baillie, whose tedious dramas thrilled ourgrandfathers; Mrs. Tighe, whose Psyche was very much admired by Keats inhis youthful days; Frances Kemble, Mrs. Siddons's niece; poor L. E. L. , whom Disraeli described as 'the personification of Brompton, pink satindress, white satin shoes, red cheeks, snub nose, and her hair a laSappho'; the two beautiful sisters, Lady Dufferin and Mrs. Norton; EmilyBronte, whose poems are instinct with tragic power and quite terrible intheir bitter intensity of passion, the fierce fire of feeling seemingalmost to consume the raiment of form; Eliza Cook, a kindly, vulgarwriter; George Eliot, whose poetry is too abstract, and lacks allrhythmical life; Mrs. Carlyle, who wrote much better poetry than herhusband, though this is hardly high praise; and Mrs. Browning, the firstreally great poetess in our literature. Nor are contemporary writersforgotten. Christina Rossetti, some of whose poems are quite pricelessin their beauty; Mrs. Augusta Webster, Mrs. Hamilton King, Miss MaryRobinson, Mrs. Craik; Jean Ingelow, whose sonnet on An Ancient Chess Kingis like an exquisitely carved gem; Mrs. Pfeiffer; Miss May Probyn, apoetess with the true lyrical impulse of song, whose work is as delicateas it is delightful; Mrs. Nesbit, a very pure and perfect artist; MissRosa Mulholland, Miss Katharine Tynan, Lady Charlotte Elliot, and manyother well-known writers, are duly and adequately represented. On thewhole, Mrs. Sharp's collection is very pleasant reading indeed, and theextracts given from the works of living poetesses are extremelyremarkable, not merely for their absolute artistic excellence, but alsofor the light they throw upon the spirit of modern culture. 

It is not, however, by any means a complete anthology. Dame JulianaBerners is possibly too antiquated in style to be suitable to a modernaudience. But where is Anne Askew, who wrote a ballad in Newgate; andwhere is Queen Elizabeth, whose 'most sweet and sententious ditty' onMary Stuart is so highly praised by Puttenham as an example of'Exargasia, ' or The Gorgeous in Literature? Why is the Countess ofPembroke excluded? Sidney's sister should surely have a place in anyanthology of English verse. Where is Sidney's niece, Lady Mary Wroth, towhom Ben Jonson dedicated The Alchemist? Where is 'the noble ladie DianaPrimrose, ' who wrote A Chain of Pearl, or a memorial of the peerlessgraces and heroic virtues of Queen Elizabeth, of glorious memory? Whereis Mary Morpeth, the friend and admirer of Drummond of Hawthornden? Whereis the Princess Elizabeth, daughter of James I. , and where is AnneKilligrew, maid of honour to the Duchess of York? The Marchioness ofWharton, whose poems were praised by Waller; Lady Chudleigh, whose linesbeginning--

 Wife and servant are the same, But only differ in the name, are very curious and interesting; Rachel Lady Russell, ConstantiaGrierson, Mary Barber, Laetitia Pilkington; Eliza Haywood, whom Popehonoured by a place in The Dunciad; Lady Luxborough, Lord Bolingbroke'shalf-sister; Lady Mary Wortley Montagu; Lady Temple, whose poems wereprinted by Horace Walpole; Perdita, whose lines on the snowdrop are verypathetic; the beautiful Duchess of Devonshire, of whom Gibbon said that'she was made for something better than a Duchess'; Mrs. Ratcliffe, Mrs. Chapone, and Amelia Opie, all deserve a place on historical, if not onartistic, grounds. In fact, the space given by Mrs. Sharp to modern andliving poetesses is somewhat disproportionate, and I am sure that thoseon whose brows the laurels are still green would not grudge a little roomto those the green of whose laurels is withered and the music of whoselyres is mute. 

* * * * *

One of the most powerful and pathetic novels that has recently appearedis A Village Tragedy by Margaret L. Woods. To find any parallel to thislurid little story, one must go to Dostoieffski or to Guy de Maupassant. Not that Mrs. Woods can be said to have taken either of these two greatmasters of fiction as her model, but there is something in her work thatrecalls their method; she has not a little of their fierce intensity, their terrible concentration, their passionless yet poignant objectivity;like them, she seems to allow life to suggest its own mode ofpresentation; and, like them, she recognises that a frank acceptance ofthe facts of life is the true basis of all modern imitative art. Thescene of Mrs. Woods's story lies in one of the villages near Oxford; thecharacters are very few in number, and the plot is extremely simple. Itis a romance of modern Arcadia--a tale of the love of a farm-labourer fora girl who, though slightly above him in social station and education, isyet herself also a servant on a farm. True Arcadians they are, both ofthem, and their ignorance and isolation serve only to intensify thetragedy that gives the story its title. It is the fashion nowadays tolabel literature, so, no doubt, Mrs. Woods's novel will be spoken of as'realistic. ' Its realism, however, is the realism of the artist, not ofthe reporter; its tact of treatment, subtlety of perception, and finedistinction of style, make it rather a poem than a proces-verbal; andthough it lays bare to us the mere misery of life, it suggests somethingof life's mystery also. Very delicate, too, is the handling of externalNature. There are no formal guide-book descriptions of scenery, noranything of what Byron petulantly called 'twaddling about trees, ' but weseem to breathe the atmosphere of the country, to catch the exquisitescent of the beanfields, so familiar to all who have ever wanderedthrough the Oxfordshire lanes in June; to hear the birds singing in thethicket, and the sheep-bells tinkling from the hill. Characterisation, that enemy of literary form, is such an essential part of the method ofthe modern writer of fiction, that Nature has almost become to thenovelist what light and shade are to the painter--the one permanentelement of style; and if the power of A Village Tragedy be due to itsportrayal of human life, no small portion of its charm comes from itsTheocritean setting. 

* * * * *

It is, however, not merely in fiction and in poetry that the women ofthis century are making their mark. Their appearance amongst theprominent speakers at the Church Congress, some weeks ago, was in itselfa very remarkable proof of the growing influence of women's opinions onall matters connected with the elevation of our national life, and theamelioration of our social conditions. When the Bishops left theplatform to their wives, it may be said that a new era began, and thechange will, no doubt, be productive of much good. The Apostolic dictum, that women should not be suffered to teach, is no longer applicable to asociety such as ours, with its solidarity of interests, its recognitionof natural rights, and its universal education, however suitable it mayhave been to the Greek cities under Roman rule. Nothing in the UnitedStates struck me more than the fact that the remarkable intellectualprogress of that country is very largely due to the efforts of Americanwomen, who edit many of the most powerful magazines and newspapers, takepart in the discussion of every question of public interest, and exercisean important influence upon the growth and tendencies of literature andart. Indeed, the women of America are the one class in the communitythat enjoys that leisure which is so necessary for culture. The men are, as a rule, so absorbed in business, that the task of bringing someelement of form into the chaos of daily life is left almost entirely tothe opposite sex, and an eminent Bostonian once assured me that in thetwentieth century the whole culture of his country would be inpetticoats. By that time, however, it is probable that the dress of thetwo sexes will be assimilated, as similarity of costume always followssimilarity of pursuits. 

* * * * *

In a recent article in La France, M. Sarcey puts this point very well. The further we advance, he says, the more apparent does it become thatwomen are to take their share as bread-winners in the world. The task isno longer monopolised by men, and will, perhaps, be equally shared by thesexes in another hundred years. It will be necessary, however, for womento invent a suitable costume, as their present style of dress is quiteinappropriate to any kind of mechanical labour, and must be radicallychanged before they can compete with men upon their own ground. As tothe question of desirability, M. Sarcey refuses to speak. 'I shall notsee the end of this revolution, ' he remarks, 'and I am glad of it. ' But, as is pointed out in a very sensible article in the Daily News, there isno doubt that M. Sarcey has reason and common-sense on his side withregard to the absolute unsuitability of ordinary feminine attire to anysort of handicraft, or even to any occupation which necessitates a dailywalk to business and back again in all kinds of weather. Women's dresscan easily be modified and adapted to any exigencies of the kind; butmost women refuse to modify or adapt it. They must follow the fashion, whether it be convenient or the reverse. And, after all, what is afashion? From the artistic point of view, it is usually a form ofugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months. Fromthe point of view of science, it not unfrequently violates every law ofhealth, every principle of hygiene. While from the point of view ofsimple ease and comfort, it is not too much to say that, with theexception of M. Felix's charming tea-gowns, and a few English tailor-madecostumes, there is not a single form of really fashionable dress that canbe worn without a certain amount of absolute misery to the wearer. Thecontortion of the feet of the Chinese beauty, said Dr. Naftel at the lastInternational Medical Congress, held at Washington, is no more barbarousor unnatural than the panoply of the femme du monde. 

And yet how sensible is the dress of the London milk-woman, of the Irishor Scotch fishwife, of the North-Country factory-girl! An attempt wasmade recently to prevent the pit-women from working, on the ground thattheir costume was unsuited to their sex, but it is really only the idleclasses who dress badly. Wherever physical labour of any kind isrequired, the costume used is, as a rule, absolutely right, for labournecessitates freedom, and without freedom there is no such thing asbeauty in dress at all. In fact, the beauty of dress depends on thebeauty of the human figure, and whatever limits, constrains, andmutilates is essentially ugly, though the eyes of many are so blinded bycustom that they do not notice the ugliness till it has becomeunfashionable. 

What women's dress will be in the future it is difficult to say. Thewriter of the Daily News article is of opinion that skirts will always beworn as distinctive of the sex, and it is obvious that men's dress, inits present condition, is not by any means an example of a perfectlyrational costume. It is more than probable, however, that the dress ofthe twentieth century will emphasise distinctions of occupation, notdistinctions of sex. 

* * * * *

It is hardly too much to say that, by the death of the author of JohnHalifax, Gentleman, our literature has sustained a heavy loss. Mrs. Craik was one of the finest of our women-writers, and though her art hadalways what Keats called 'a palpable intention upon one, ' still itsimaginative qualities were of no mean order. There is hardly one of herbooks that has not some distinction of style; there is certainly not oneof them that does not show an ardent love of all that is beautiful andgood in life. The good she, perhaps, loved somewhat more than thebeautiful, but her heart had room for both. Her first novel appeared in1849, the year of the publication of Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, andMrs. Gaskell's Ruth, and her last work was done for the magazine which Ihave the honour to edit. She was very much interested in the scheme forthe foundation of the Woman's World, suggested its title, and promised tobe one of its warmest supporters. One article from her pen is already inproof and will appear next month, and in a letter I received from her, afew days before she died, she told me that she had almost finished asecond, to be called Between Schooldays and Marriage. Few women haveenjoyed a greater popularity than Mrs. Craik, or have better deserved it. It is sometimes said that John Halifax is not a real man, but only awoman's ideal of a man. Well, let us be grateful for such ideals. Noone can read the story of which John Halifax is the hero without beingthe better for it. Mrs. Craik will live long in the affectionate memoryof all who knew her, and one of her novels, at any rate, will always havea high and honourable place in English fiction. Indeed, for simplenarrative power, some of the chapters of John Halifax, Gentleman, arealmost unequalled in our prose literature. 

* * * * *

The news of the death of Lady Brassey has been also received by theEnglish people with every expression of sorrow and sympathy. Though herbooks were not remarkable for any perfection of literary style, they hadthe charm of brightness, vivacity, and unconventionality. They revealeda fascinating personality, and their touches of domesticity made themclassics in many an English household. In all modern movements LadyBrassey took a keen interest. She gained a first-class certificate inthe South Kensington School of Cookery, scullery department and all; wasone of the most energetic members of the St. John's AmbulanceAssociation, many branches of which she succeeded in founding; and, whether at Normanhurst or in Park Lane, always managed to devote someportion of her day to useful and practical work. It is sad to have tochronicle in the first number of the Woman's World the death of two ofthe most remarkable Englishwomen of our day. 

(1) Memoirs of Wilhelmine Margravine of Baireuth. Translated and editedby Her Royal Highness Princess Christian of Schleswig-Holstein, Princessof Great Britain and Ireland. (David Stott. )

(2) Women's Voices: An Anthology of the most Characteristic Poems byEnglish, Scotch, and Irish Women. Selected, edited, and arranged by Mrs. William Sharp. (Walter Scott. )

(3) A Village Tragedy. By Margaret L. Woods. (Bentley and Son. )

MR. MAHAFFY'S NEW BOOK

(Pall Mall Gazette, November 9, 1887. )

Mr. Mahaffy's new book will be a great disappointment to everybody exceptthe Paper-Unionists and the members of the Primrose League. His subject, the history of Greek Life and Thought: from the Age of Alexander to theRoman Conquest, is extremely interesting, but the manner in which thesubject is treated is quite unworthy of a scholar, nor can there beanything more depressing than Mr. Mahaffy's continual efforts to degradehistory to the level of the ordinary political pamphlet of contemporaryparty warfare. There is, of course, no reason why Mr. Mahaffy should becalled upon to express any sympathy with the aspirations of the old Greekcities for freedom and autonomy. The personal preferences of modernhistorians on these points are matters of no import whatsoever. But inhis attempts to treat the Hellenic world as 'Tipperary writ large, ' touse Alexander the Great as a means of whitewashing Mr. Smith, and tofinish the battle of Chaeronea on the plains of Mitchelstown, Mr. Mahaffyshows an amount of political bias and literary blindness that is quiteextraordinary. He might have made his book a work of solid and enduringinterest, but he has chosen to give it a merely ephemeral value and tosubstitute for the scientific temper of the true historian the prejudice, the flippancy, and the violence of the platform partisan. For theflippancy parallels can, no doubt, be found in some of Mr. Mahaffy'searlier books, but the prejudice and the violence are new, and theirappearance is very much to be regretted. There is always somethingpeculiarly impotent about the violence of a literary man. It seems tobear no reference to facts, for it is never kept in check by action. Itis simply a question of adjectives and rhetoric, of exaggeration and over-emphasis. Mr. Balfour is very anxious that Mr. William O'Brien shouldwear prison clothes, sleep on a plank bed, and be subjected to otherindignities, but Mr. Mahaffy goes far beyond such mild measures as these, and begins his history by frankly expressing his regret that Demostheneswas not summarily put to death for his attempt to keep the spirit ofpatriotism alive among the citizens of Athens! Indeed, he has nopatience with what he calls 'the foolish and senseless opposition toMacedonia'; regards the revolt of the Spartans against 'Alexander's LordLieutenant for Greece' as an example of 'parochial politics'; indulges inPrimrose League platitudes against a low franchise and the iniquity ofallowing 'every pauper' to have a vote; and tells us that the'demagogues' and 'pretended patriots' were so lost to shame that theyactually preached to the parasitic mob of Athens the doctrine ofautonomy--'not now extinct, ' Mr. Mahaffy adds regretfully--andpropounded, as a principle of political economy, the curious idea thatpeople should be allowed to manage their own affairs! As for thepersonal character of the despots, Mr. Mahaffy admits that if he had tojudge by the accounts in the Greek historians, from Herodotus downwards, he 'would certainly have said that the ineffaceable passion for autonomy, which marks every epoch of Greek history, and every canton within itslimits, must have arisen from the excesses committed by the officers offoreign potentates, or local tyrants, ' but a careful study of thecartoons published in United Ireland has convinced him 'that a ruler maybe the soberest, the most conscientious, the most considerate, and yethave terrible things said of him by mere political malcontents. ' Infact, since Mr. Balfour has been caricatured, Greek history must beentirely rewritten! This is the pass to which the distinguishedprofessor of a distinguished university has been brought. Nor cananything equal Mr. Mahaffy's prejudice against the Greek patriots, unlessit be his contempt for those few fine Romans who, sympathising withHellenic civilisation and culture, recognised the political value ofautonomy and the intellectual importance of a healthy national life. Hemocks at what he calls their 'vulgar mawkishness about Greek liberties, their anxiety to redress historical wrongs, ' and congratulates hisreaders that this feeling was not intensified by the remorse that theirown forefathers had been the oppressors. Luckily, says Mr. Mahaffy, theold Greeks had conquered Troy, and so the pangs of conscience which nowso deeply afflict a Gladstone and a Morley for the sins of theirancestors could hardly affect a Marcius or a Quinctius! It is quiteunnecessary to comment on the silliness and bad taste of passages of thiskind, but it is interesting to note that the facts of history are toostrong even for Mr. Mahaffy. In spite of his sneers at the provincialityof national feeling and his vague panegyrics on cosmopolitan culture, heis compelled to admit that 'however patriotism may be superseded in strayindividuals by larger benevolence, bodies of men who abandon it will onlyreplace it by meaner motives, ' and cannot help expressing his regret thatthe better classes among the Greek communities were so entirely devoid ofpublic spirit that they squandered 'as idle absentees, or still idlerresidents, the time and means given them to benefit their country, ' andfailed to recognise their opportunity of founding a Hellenic FederalEmpire. Even when he comes to deal with art, he cannot help admittingthat the noblest sculpture of the time was that which expressed thespirit of the first great _national_ struggle, the repulse of the Gallichordes which overran Greece in 278 B. C. , and that to the patrioticfeeling evoked at this crisis we owe the Belvedere Apollo, the Artemis ofthe Vatican, the Dying Gaul, and the finest achievements of the Perganeneschool. In literature, also, Mr. Mahaffy is loud in his lamentationsover what he considers to be the shallow society tendencies of the newcomedy, and misses the fine freedom of Aristophanes, with his intensepatriotism, his vital interest in politics, his large issues and hisdelight in vigorous national life. He confesses the decay of oratoryunder the blighting influences of imperialism, and the sterility of thosepedantic disquisitions upon style which are the inevitable consequence ofthe lack of healthy subject-matter. Indeed, on the last page of hishistory Mr. Mahaffy makes a formal recantation of most of his politicalprejudices. He is still of opinion that Demosthenes should have been putto death for resisting the Macedonian invasion, but admits that theimperialism of Rome, which followed the imperialism of Alexander, produced incalculable mischief, beginning with intellectual decay, andending with financial ruin. 'The touch of Rome, ' he says, 'numbed Greeceand Egypt, Syria and Asia Minor, and if there are great buildingsattesting the splendour of the Empire, where are the signs ofintellectual and moral vigour, if we except that stronghold ofnationality, the little land of Palestine?' This palinode is, no doubt, intended to give a plausible air of fairness to the book, but such adeath-bed repentance comes too late, and makes the whole precedinghistory seem not fair but foolish. 

It is a relief to turn to the few chapters that deal directly with thesocial life and thought of the Greeks. Here Mr. Mahaffy is very pleasantreading indeed. His account of the colleges at Athens and Alexandria, for instance, is extremely interesting, and so is his estimate of theschools of Zeno, of Epicurus, and of Pyrrho. Excellent, too, in manypoints is the description of the literature and art of the period. We donot agree with Mr. Mahaffy in his panegyric of the Laocoon, and we aresurprised to find a writer, who is very indignant at what he considers tobe the modern indifference to Alexandrine poetry, gravely stating that nostudy is 'more wearisome and profitless' than that of the GreekAnthology. 

The criticism of the new comedy, also, seems to us somewhat pedantic. Theaim of social comedy, in Menander no less than in Sheridan, is to mirrorthe manners, not to reform the morals, of its day, and the censure of thePuritan, whether real or affected, is always out of place in literarycriticism, and shows a want of recognition of the essential distinctionbetween art and life. After all, it is only the Philistine who thinks ofblaming Jack Absolute for his deception, Bob Acres for his cowardice, andCharles Surface for his extravagance, and there is very little use inairing one's moral sense at the expense of one's artistic appreciation. Valuable, also, though modernity of expression undoubtedly is, still itrequires to be used with tact and judgment. There is no objection to Mr. Mahaffy's describing Philopoemen as the Garibaldi, and Antigonus Doson asthe Victor Emmanuel of his age. Such comparisons have, no doubt, acertain cheap popular value. But, on the other hand, a phrase like'Greek Pre-Raphaelitism' is rather awkward; not much is gained bydragging in an allusion to Mr. Shorthouse's John Inglesant in adescription of the Argonautics of Apollonius Rhodius; and when we aretold that the superb Pavilion erected in Alexandria by PtolemyPhiladelphus was a 'sort of glorified Holborn Restaurant, ' we must saythat the elaborate description of the building given in Athenaeus couldhave been summed up in a better and a more intelligible epigram. 

On the whole, however, Mr. Mahaffy's book may have the effect of drawingattention to a very important and interesting period in the history ofHellenism. We can only regret that, just as he has spoiled his accountof Greek politics by a foolish partisan bias, so he should have marredthe value of some of his remarks on literature by a bias that is quite asunmeaning. It is uncouth and harsh to say that 'the superannuatedschoolboy who holds fellowships and masterships at English colleges'knows nothing of the period in question except what he reads inTheocritus, or that a man may be considered in England a distinguishedGreek professor 'who does not know a single date in Greek history betweenthe death of Alexander and the battle of Cynoscephalae'; and thestatement that Lucian, Plutarch, and the four Gospels are excluded fromEnglish school and college studies in consequence of the pedantry of'pure scholars, as they are pleased to call themselves, ' is, of course, quite inaccurate. In fact, not merely does Mr. Mahaffy miss the spiritof the true historian, but he often seems entirely devoid of the temperof the true man of letters. He is clever, and, at times, even brilliant, but he lacks reasonableness, moderation, style and charm. He seems tohave no sense of literary proportion, and, as a rule, spoils his case byoverstating it. With all his passion for imperialism, there is somethingabout Mr. Mahaffy that is, if not parochial, at least provincial, and wecannot say that this last book of his will add anything to his reputationeither as an historian, a critic, or a man of taste. 

Greek Life and Thought: from the Age of Alexander to the Roman Conquest. By J. P. Mahaffy, Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin. (Macmillan and Co. )

MR. MORRIS'S COMPLETION OF THE ODYSSEY

(Pall Mall Gazette, November 24, 1887. )

Mr. Morris's second volume brings the great romantic epic of Greekliterature to its perfect conclusion, and although there can never be anultimate translation of either Iliad or Odyssey, as each successive ageis sure to find pleasure in rendering the two poems in its own manner andaccording to its own canons of taste, still it is not too much to saythat Mr. Morris's version will always be a true classic amongst ourclassical translations. It is not, of course, flawless. In our noticeof the first volume we ventured to say that Mr. Morris was sometimes farmore Norse than Greek, nor does the volume that now lies before us makeus alter that opinion. The particular metre, also, selected by Mr. Morris, although admirably adapted to express 'the strong-winged music ofHomer, ' as far as its flow and freedom are concerned, misses something ofits dignity and calm. Here, it must be admitted, we feel a distinctloss, for there is in Homer not a little of Milton's lofty manner, and ifswiftness be an essential of the Greek hexameter, stateliness is one ofits distinguishing qualities in Homer's hands. This defect, however, ifwe must call it a defect, seems almost unavoidable, as for certainmetrical reasons a majestic movement in English verse is necessarily aslow movement; and, after all that can be said is said, how reallyadmirable is this whole translation! If we set aside its noble qualitiesas a poem and look on it purely from the scholar's point of view, howstraightforward it is, how honest and direct! Its fidelity to theoriginal is far beyond that of any other verse-translation in ourliterature, and yet it is not the fidelity of a pedant to his text butrather the fine loyalty of poet to poet. 

When Mr. Morris's first volume appeared many of the critics complainedthat his occasional use of archaic words and unusual expressions robbedhis version of the true Homeric simplicity. This, however, is not a veryfelicitous criticism, for while Homer is undoubtedly simple in hisclearness and largeness of vision, his wonderful power of directnarration, his wholesome sanity, and the purity and precision of hismethod, simple in language he undoubtedly is not. What he was to hiscontemporaries we have, of course, no means of judging, but we know thatthe Athenian of the fifth century B. C. Found him in many places difficultto understand, and when the creative age was succeeded by the age ofcriticism and Alexandria began to take the place of Athens as the centreof culture for the Hellenistic world, Homeric dictionaries and glossariesseem to have been constantly published. Indeed, Athenaeus tells us of awonderful Byzantine blue-stocking, a precieuse from the Propontis, whowrote a long hexameter poem, called Mnemosyne, full of ingeniouscommentaries on difficulties in Homer, and in fact, it is evident that, as far as the language is concerned, such a phrase as 'Homericsimplicity' would have rather amazed an ancient Greek. As for Mr. Morris's tendency to emphasise the etymological meaning of words, a pointcommented on with somewhat flippant severity in a recent number ofMacmillan's Magazine, here Mr. Morris seems to us to be in completeaccord, not merely with the spirit of Homer, but with the spirit of allearly poetry. It is quite true that language is apt to degenerate into asystem of almost algebraic symbols, and the modern city-man who takes aticket for Blackfriars Bridge, naturally never thinks of the Dominicanmonks who once had their monastery by Thames-side, and after whom thespot is named. But in earlier times it was not so. Men were then keenlyconscious of the real meaning of words, and early poetry, especially, isfull of this feeling, and, indeed, may be said to owe to it no smallportion of its poetic power and charm. These old words, then, and thisold use of words which we find in Mr. Morris's Odyssey can be amplyjustified upon historical grounds, and as for their artistic effect, itis quite excellent. Pope tried to put Homer into the ordinary languageof his day, with what result we know only too well; but Mr. Morris, whouses his archaisms with the tact of a true artist, and to whom indeedthey seem to come absolutely naturally, has succeeded in giving to hisversion by their aid that touch, not of 'quaintness, ' for Homer is neverquaint, but of old-world romance and old-world beauty, which we modernsfind so pleasurable, and to which the Greeks themselves were so keenlysensitive. 

As for individual passages of special merit, Mr. Morris's translation isno robe of rags sewn with purple patches for critics to sample. Its realvalue lies in the absolute rightness and coherence of the whole, in thegrand architecture of the swift, strong verse, and in the fact that thestandard is not merely high but everywhere sustained. It is impossible, however, to resist the temptation of quoting Mr. Morris's rendering ofthat famous passage in the twenty-third book of the epic, in whichOdysseus eludes the trap laid for him by Penelope, whose very faith inthe certainty of her husband's return makes her sceptical of his identitywhen he stands before her; an instance, by the way, of Homer's wonderfulpsychological knowledge of human nature, as it is always the dreamerhimself who is most surprised when his dream comes true. 

 Thus she spake to prove her husband; but Odysseus, grieved at heart, Spake thus unto his bed-mate well-skilled in gainful art: 'O woman, thou sayest a word exceeding grievous to me! Who hath otherwhere shifted my bedstead? full hard for him should it be, For as deft as he were, unless soothly a very God come here, Who easily, if he willed it, might shift it otherwhere. But no mortal man is living, how strong soe'er in his youth, Who shall lightly hale it elsewhere, since a mighty wonder forsooth Is wrought in that fashioned bedstead, and I wrought it, and I alone. In the close grew a thicket of olive, a long-leaved tree full-grown, That flourished and grew goodly as big as a pillar about, So round it I built my bride-room, till I did the work right out With ashlar stone close-fitting; and I roofed it overhead, And thereto joined doors I made me, well-fitting in their stead. Then I lopped away the boughs of the long-leafed olive-tree, And shearing the bole from the root up full well and cunningly, I planed it about with the brass, and set the rule thereto, And shaping thereof a bed-post, with the wimble I bored it through. So beginning, I wrought out the bedstead, and finished it utterly, And with gold enwrought it about, and with silver and ivory, And stretched on it a thong of oxhide with the purple dye made bright. Thus then the sign I have shown thee; nor, woman, know I aright If my bed yet bideth steadfast, or if to another place Some man hath moved it, and smitten the olive-bole from its base. '

These last twelve books of the Odyssey have not the same marvel ofromance, adventure and colour that we find in the earlier part of theepic. There is nothing in them that we can compare to the exquisiteidyll of Nausicaa or to the Titanic humour of the episode in the Cyclops'cave. Penelope has not the glamour of Circe, and the song of the Sirensmay sound sweeter than the whizz of the arrows of Odysseus as he standson the threshold of his hall. Yet, for sheer intensity of passionatepower, for concentration of intellectual interest and for masterlydramatic construction, these latter books are quite unequalled. Indeed, they show very clearly how it was that, as Greek art developed, the epospassed into the drama. The whole scheme of the argument, the return ofthe hero in disguise, his disclosure of himself to his son, his terriblevengeance on his enemies and his final recognition by his wife, remindsus of the plot of more than one Greek play, and shows us what the greatAthenian poet meant when he said that his own dramas were merely scrapsfrom Homer's table. In rendering this splendid poem into English verse, Mr. Morris has done our literature a service that can hardly beover-estimated, and it is pleasant to think that, even should theclassics be entirely excluded from our educational systems, the Englishboy will still be able to know something of Homer's delightful tales, tocatch an echo of his grand music and to wander with the wise Odysseusround 'the shores of old romance. '

The Odyssey of Homer. Done into English Verse by William Morris, Authorof The Earthly Paradise. Volume II. (Reeves and Turner. )

SIR CHARLES BOWEN'S VIRGIL

(Pall Mall Gazette, November 30, 1887. )

Sir Charles Bowen's translation of the Eclogues and the first six booksof the AEneid is hardly the work of a poet, but it is a very charmingversion for all that, combining as it does the fine loyalty and learningof a scholar with the graceful style of a man of letters, two essentialqualifications for any one who would render in English verse thepicturesque pastorals of Italian provincial life, or the stately andpolished epic of Imperial Rome. Dryden was a true poet, but, for somereason or other, he failed to catch the real Virgilian spirit. His ownqualities became defects when he accepted the task of a translator. Heis too robust, too manly, too strong. He misses Virgil's strange andsubtle sweetness and has but little of his exquisite melody. ProfessorConington, on the other hand, was an admirable and painstaking scholar, but he was so entirely devoid of literary tact and artistic insight thathe thought that the majesty of Virgil could be rendered in the jinglingmanner of Marmion, and though there is certainly far more of the mediaevalknight than of the moss-trooper about AEneas, even Mr. Morris's versionis not by any means perfect. Compared with professor Conington's badballad it is, of course, as gold to brass; considered simply as a poem ithas noble and enduring qualities of beauty, music and strength; but ithardly conveys to us the sense that the AEneid is the literary epic of aliterary age. There is more of Homer in it than of Virgil, and theordinary reader would hardly realise from the flow and spirit of itsswinging lines that Virgil was a self-conscious artist, the Laureate of acultured Court. The AEneid bears almost the same relation to the Iliadthat the Idylls of the King do to the old Celtic romances of Arthur. Likethem it is full of felicitous modernisms, of exquisite literary echoesand of delicate and delightful pictures; as Lord Tennyson loves Englandso did Virgil love Rome; the pageants of history and the purple of empireare equally dear to both poets; but neither of them has the grandsimplicity or the large humanity of the early singers, and, as a hero, AEneas is no less a failure than Arthur. Sir Charles Bowen's versionhardly gives us this peculiar literary quality of Virgil's verse, and, now and then, it reminds us, by some awkward inversion, of the fact thatit is a translation; still, on the whole, it is extremely pleasant toread, and, if it does not absolutely mirror Virgil, it at least brings usmany charming memories of him. 

The metre Sir Charles Bowen has selected is a form of English hexameter, with the final dissyllable shortened into a foot of a single syllableonly. It is, of course, accentual not quantitative, and though it missesthat element of sustained strength which is given by the dissyllabicending of the Latin verse, and has consequently a tendency to fall intocouplets, the increased facility of rhyming gained by the change is of nosmall value. To any English metre that aims at swiftness of movementrhyme seems to be an absolute essential, and there are not enough doublerhymes in our language to admit of the retention of this finaldissyllabic foot. 

As an example of Sir Charles Bowen's method we would take his renderingof the famous passage in the fifth Eclogue on the death of Daphnis:

 All of the nymphs went weeping for Daphnis cruelly slain: Ye were witnesses, hazels and river waves, of the pain When to her son's sad body the mother clave with a cry, Calling the great gods cruel, and cruel the stars of the sky. None upon those dark days their pastured oxen did lead, Daphnis, to drink of the cold clear rivulet; never a steed Tasted the flowing waters, or cropped one blade in the mead. Over thy grave how the lions of Carthage roared in despair, Daphnis, the echoes of mountain wild and of forest declare. Daphnis was first who taught us to guide, with a chariot rein, Far Armenia's tigers, the chorus of Iacchus to train, Led us with foliage waving the pliant spear to entwine. As to the tree her vine is a glory, her grapes to the vine, Bull to the horned herd, and the corn to a fruitful plain, Thou to thine own wert beauty; and since fate robbed us of thee, Pales herself, and Apollo are gone from meadow and lea. 

'Calling the great gods cruel, and cruel the stars of the sky' is a veryfelicitous rendering of 'Atque deos atque astra vocat crudelia mater, 'and so is 'Thou to thine own wert beauty' for 'Tu decus omne tuis. ' Thispassage, too, from the fourth book of the AEneid is good:

 Now was the night. Tired limbs upon earth were folded to sleep, Silent the forests and fierce sea-waves; in the firmament deep Midway rolled heaven's stars; no sound on the meadow stirred; Every beast of the field, each bright-hued feathery bird Haunting the limpid lakes, or the tangled briary glade, Under the silent night in sleep were peacefully laid: All but the grieving Queen. She yields her never to rest, Takes not the quiet night to her eyelids or wearied breast. 

And this from the sixth book is worth quoting:

 'Never again such hopes shall a youth of the lineage of Troy Rouse in his great forefathers of Latium! Never a boy Nobler pride shall inspire in the ancient Romulus land! Ah, for his filial love! for his old-world faith! for his hand Matchless in battle! Unharmed what foemen had offered to stand Forth in his path, when charging on foot for the enemy's ranks Or when plunging the spur in his foam-flecked courser's flanks! Child of a nation's sorrow! if thou canst baffle the Fates' Bitter decrees, and break for a while their barrier gates, Thine to become Marcellus! I pray thee bring me anon Handfuls of lilies, that I bright flowers may strew on my son, Heap on the shade of the boy unborn these gifts at the least, Doing the dead, though vainly, the last sad service. ' He ceased. 

'Thine to become Marcellus' has hardly the simple pathos of 'Tu Marcelluseris, ' but 'Child of a nation's sorrow' is a graceful rendering of 'Heu, miserande puer. ' Indeed, there is a great deal of feeling in the wholetranslation, and the tendency of the metre to run into couplets, of whichwe have spoken before, is corrected to a certain degree in the passagequoted above from the Eclogues by the occasional use of the triplet, as, elsewhere, by the introduction of alternate, not successive, rhymes. 

Sir Charles Bowen is to be congratulated on the success of his version. It has both style and fidelity to recommend it. The metre he has chosenseems to us more suited to the sustained majesty of the AEneid than it isto the pastoral note of the Eclogues. It can bring us something of thestrength of the lyre but has hardly caught the sweetness of the pipe. Still, it is in many points a very charming translation, and we gladlywelcome it as a most valuable addition to the literature of echoes. 

Virgil in English Verse. Eclogues and AEneid I. -VI. By the Right Hon. Sir Charles Bowen, one of Her Majesty's Lords Justices of Appeal. (JohnMurray. )

LITERARY AND OTHER NOTES--II

(Woman's World, December 1887. )

Lady Bellairs's Gossips with Girls and Maidens contains some veryinteresting essays, and a quite extraordinary amount of usefulinformation on all matters connected with the mental and physicaltraining of women. It is very difficult to give good advice withoutbeing irritating, and almost impossible to be at once didactic anddelightful; but Lady Bellairs manages very cleverly to steer a middlecourse between the Charybdis of dulness and the Scylla of flippancy. There is a pleasing intimite about her style, and almost everything thatshe says has both good sense and good humour to recommend it. Nor doesshe confine herself to those broad generalisations on morals, which areso easy to make, so difficult to apply. Indeed, she seems to have awholesome contempt for the cheap severity of abstract ethics, enters intothe most minute details for the guidance of conduct, and draws outelaborate lists of what girls should avoid, and what they shouldcultivate. 

Here are some specimens of 'What to Avoid':--

 A loud, weak, affected, whining, harsh, or shrill tone of voice. Extravagancies in conversation--such phrases as 'Awfully this, ' 'Beastly that, ' 'Loads of time, ' 'Don't you know, ' 'hate' for 'dislike, ' etc. Sudden exclamations of annoyance, surprise, or joy--often dangerously approaching to 'female swearing'--as 'Bother!' 'Gracious!' 'How jolly!' Yawning when listening to any one. Talking on family matters, even to your bosom friends. Attempting any vocal or instrumental piece of music that you cannot execute with ease. Crossing your letters. Making a short, sharp nod with the head, intended to do duty for a bow. All nonsense in the shape of belief in dreams, omens, presentiments, ghosts, spiritualism, palmistry, etc. Entertaining wild flights of the imagination, or empty idealistic aspirations. 

I am afraid that I have a good deal of sympathy with what are called'empty idealistic aspirations'; and 'wild flights of the imagination' areso extremely rare in the nineteenth century that they seem to medeserving rather of praise than of censure. The exclamation 'Bother!'also, though certainly lacking in beauty, might, I think, be permittedunder circumstances of extreme aggravation, such as, for instance, therejection of a manuscript by the editor of a magazine; but in all otherrespects the list seems to be quite excellent. As for 'What toCultivate, ' nothing could be better than the following:

 An unaffected, low, distinct, silver-toned voice. The art of pleasing those around you, and seeming pleased with them, and all they may do for you. The charm of making little sacrifices quite naturally, as if of no account to yourself. The habit of making allowances for the opinions, feelings, or prejudices of others. An erect carriage--that is, a sound body. A good memory for faces, and facts connected with them--thus avoiding giving offence through not recognising or bowing to people, or saying to them what had best been left unsaid. The art of listening without impatience to prosy talkers, and smiling at the twice-told tale or joke. 

I cannot help thinking that the last aphorism aims at too high astandard. There is always a certain amount of danger in any attempt tocultivate impossible virtues. However, it is only fair to add that LadyBellairs recognises the importance of self-development quite as much asthe importance of self-denial; and there is a great deal of sound sensein everything that she says about the gradual growth and formation ofcharacter. Indeed, those who have not read Aristotle upon this pointmight with advantage read Lady Bellairs. 

Miss Constance Naden's little volume, A Modern Apostle and Other Poems, shows both culture and courage--culture in its use of language, couragein its selection of subject-matter. The modern apostle of whom MissNaden sings is a young clergyman who preaches Pantheistic Socialism inthe Free Church of some provincial manufacturing town, convertseverybody, except the woman whom he loves, and is killed in a streetriot. The story is exceedingly powerful, but seems more suitable forprose than for verse. It is right that a poet should be full of thespirit of his age, but the external forms of modern life are hardly, asyet, expressive of that spirit. They are truths of fact, not truths ofthe imagination, and though they may give the poet an opportunity forrealism, they often rob the poem of the reality that is so essential toit. Art, however, is a matter of result, not of theory, and if the fruitis pleasant, we should not quarrel about the tree. Miss Naden's work isdistinguished by rich imagery, fine colour, and sweet music, and theseare things for which we should be grateful, wherever we find them. Inpoint of mere technical skill, her longer poems are the best; but some ofthe shorter poems are very fascinating. This, for instance, is pretty:

 The copyist group was gathered round A time-worn fresco, world-renowned, Whose central glory once had been The face of Christ, the Nazarene. 

 And every copyist of the crowd With his own soul that face endowed, Gentle, severe, majestic, mean; But which was Christ, the Nazarene?

 Then one who watched them made complaint, And marvelled, saying, 'Wherefore paint Till ye be sure your eyes have seen The face of Christ, the Nazarene?'

And this sonnet is full of suggestion:

 The wine-flushed monarch slept, but in his ear An angel breathed--'Repent, or choose the flame Quenchless. ' In dread he woke, but not in shame, Deep musing--'Sin I love, yet hell I fear. '

 Wherefore he left his feasts and minions dear, And justly ruled, and died a saint in name. But when his hasting spirit heavenward came, A stern voice cried--'O Soul! what dost thou here?'

 'Love I forswore, and wine, and kept my vow To live a just and joyless life, and now I crave reward. ' The voice came like a knell-- 'Fool! dost thou hope to find again thy mirth, And those foul joys thou didst renounce on earth? Yea, enter in! My heaven shall be thy hell. '

Miss Constance Naden deserves a high place among our living poetesses, and this, as Mrs. Sharp has shown lately in her volume, entitled Women'sVoices, is no mean distinction. 

Phyllis Browne's Life of Mrs. Somerville forms part of a very interestinglittle series, called 'The World's Workers'--a collection of shortbiographies catholic enough to include personalities so widely differentas Turner and Richard Cobden, Handel and Sir Titus Salt, RobertStephenson and Florence Nightingale, and yet possessing a certaindefinite aim. As a mathematician and a scientist, the translator andpopulariser of La Mecanique Celeste, and the author of an important bookon physical geography, Mrs. Somerville is, of course, well known. Thescientific bodies of Europe covered her with honours; her bust stands inthe hall of the Royal Society, and one of the Women's Colleges at Oxfordbears her name. Yet, considered simply in the light of a wife and amother, she is no less admirable; and those who consider that stupidityis the proper basis for the domestic virtues, and that intellectual womenmust of necessity be helpless with their hands, cannot do better thanread Phyllis Browne's pleasant little book, in which they will find thatthe greatest woman-mathematician of any age was a clever needlewoman, agood housekeeper, and a most skilful cook. Indeed, Mrs. Somerville seemsto have been quite renowned for her cookery. The discoverers of theNorth-West Passage christened an island 'Somerville, ' not as a tribute tothe distinguished mathematician, but as a recognition of the excellenceof some orange marmalade which the distinguished mathematician hadprepared with her own hands and presented to the ships before they leftEngland; and to the fact that she was able to make currant jelly at avery critical moment she owed the affection of some of her husband'srelatives, who up to that time had been rather prejudiced against her onthe ground that she was merely an unpractical Blue-stocking. 

Nor did her scientific knowledge ever warp or dull the tenderness andhumanity of her nature. For birds and animals she had always a greatlove. We hear of her as a little girl watching with eager eyes theswallows as they built their nests in summer or prepared for their flightin the autumn; and when snow was on the ground she used to open thewindows to let the robins hop in and pick crumbs on the breakfast-table. On one occasion she went with her father on a tour in the Highlands, andfound on her return that a pet goldfinch, which had been left in thecharge of the servants, had been neglected by them and had died ofstarvation. She was almost heart-broken at the event, and in writing herRecollections, seventy years after, she mentioned it and said that, asshe wrote, she felt deep pain. Her chief pet in her old age was amountain sparrow, which used to perch on her arm and go to sleep therewhile she was writing. One day the sparrow fell into the water-jug andwas drowned, to the great grief of its mistress who could hardly beconsoled for its loss, though later on we hear of a beautiful paroquettaking the place of le moineau d'Uranie, and becoming Mrs. Somerville'sconstant companion. She was also very energetic, Phyllis Browne tellsus, in trying to get a law passed in the Italian Parliament for theprotection of animals, and said once, with reference to this subject, 'WeEnglish cannot boast of humanity so long as our sportsmen find pleasurein shooting down tame pigeons as they fly terrified out of a cage'--aremark with which I entirely agree. Mr. Herbert's Bill for theprotection of land birds gave her immense pleasure, though, to quote herown words, she was 'grieved to find that "the lark, which at heaven'sgate sings, " is thought unworthy of man's protection'; and she took agreat fancy to a gentleman who, on being told of the number of singingbirds that is eaten in Italy--nightingales, goldfinches, androbins--exclaimed in horror, 'What! robins! our household birds! I wouldas soon eat a child!' Indeed, she believed to some extent in theimmortality of animals on the ground that, if animals have no future, itwould seem as if some were created for uncompensated misery--an ideawhich does not seem to me to be either extravagant or fantastic, thoughit must be admitted that the optimism on which it is based receivesabsolutely no support from science. 

On the whole, Phyllis Browne's book is very pleasant reading. Its onlyfault is that it is far too short, and this is a fault so rare in modernliterature that it almost amounts to a distinction. However, PhyllisBrowne has managed to crowd into the narrow limits at her disposal agreat many interesting anecdotes. The picture she gives of Mrs. Somerville working away at her translation of Laplace in the same roomwith her children is very charming, and reminds one of what is told ofGeorge Sand; there is an amusing account of Mrs. Somerville's visit tothe widow of the young Pretender, the Countess of Albany, who, aftertalking with her for some time, exclaimed, 'So you don't speak Italian. You must have had a very bad education'! And this story about theWaverley Novels may possibly be new to some of my readers:

 A very amusing circumstance in connection with Mrs. Somerville's acquaintance with Sir Walter arose out of the childish inquisitiveness of Woronzow Greig, Mrs. Somerville's little boy. 

 During the time Mrs. Somerville was visiting Abbotsford the Waverley Novels were appearing, and were creating a great sensation; yet even Scott's intimate friends did not know that he was the author; he enjoyed keeping the affair a mystery. But little Woronzow discovered what he was about. One day when Mrs. Somerville was talking about a novel that had just been published, Woronzow said, 'I knew all these stories long ago, for Mr. Scott writes on the dinner-table; when he has finished he puts the green cloth with the papers in a corner of the dining-room, and when he goes out Charlie Scott and I read the stories. '

Phyllis Browne remarks that this incident shows 'that persons who want tokeep a secret ought to be very careful when children are about'; but thestory seems to me to be far too charming to require any moral of thekind. 

Bound up in the same volume is a Life of Miss Mary Carpenter, alsowritten by Phyllis Browne. Miss Carpenter does not seem to me to havethe charm and fascination of Mrs. Somerville. There is always somethingabout her that is formal, limited, and precise. When she was about twoyears old she insisted on being called 'Doctor Carpenter' in the nursery;at the age of twelve she is described by a friend as a sedate littlegirl, who always spoke like a book; and before she entered on hereducational schemes she wrote down a solemn dedication of herself to theservice of humanity. However, she was one of the practical, hardworkingsaints of the nineteenth century, and it is no doubt quite right that thesaints should take themselves very seriously. It is only fair also toremember that her work of rescue and reformation was carried on undergreat difficulties. Here, for instance, is the picture Miss Cobbe givesus of one of the Bristol night-schools:

 It was a wonderful spectacle to see Mary Carpenter sitting patiently before the large school gallery in St. James's Back, teaching, singing, and praying with the wild street-boys, in spite of endless interruptions caused by such proceedings as shooting marbles at any object behind her, whistling, stamping, fighting, shrieking out 'Amen' in the middle of a prayer, and sometimes rising en masse and tearing like a troop of bisons in hob-nailed shoes down from the gallery, round the great schoolroom, and down the stairs, and into the street. These irrepressible outbreaks she bore with infinite good humour. 

Her own account is somewhat pleasanter, and shows that 'the troop ofbisons in hob-nailed shoes' was not always so barbarous. 

 I had taken to my class on the preceding week some specimens of ferns neatly gummed on white paper. . . . This time I took a piece of coal- shale, with impressions of ferns, to show them. . . . I told each to examine the specimen, and tell me what he thought it was. W. Gave so bright a smile that I saw he knew; none of the others could tell; he said they were ferns, like what I showed them last week, but he thought they were chiselled on the stone. Their surprise and pleasure were great when I explained the matter to them. 

 The history of Joseph: they all found a difficulty in realising that this had actually occurred. One asked if Egypt existed now, and if people lived in it. When I told them that buildings now stood which had been erected about the time of Joseph, one said that it was impossible, as they must have fallen down ere this. I showed them the form of a pyramid, and they were satisfied. One asked if _all_ books were true. 

 The story of Macbeth impressed them very much. They knew the name of Shakespeare, having seen his name over a public-house. 

A boy defined conscience as 'a thing a gentleman hasn't got, who, when aboy finds his purse and gives it back to him, doesn't give the boysixpence. '

Another boy was asked, after a Sunday evening lecture on 'Thankfulness, 'what pleasure he enjoyed most in the course of a year. He repliedcandidly, 'Cock-fightin', ma'am; there's a pit up by the "Black Boy" asis worth anythink in Brissel. '

There is something a little pathetic in the attempt to civilise the roughstreet-boy by means of the refining influence of ferns and fossils, andit is difficult to help feeling that Miss Carpenter rather overestimatedthe value of elementary education. The poor are not to be fed uponfacts. Even Shakespeare and the Pyramids are not sufficient; nor isthere much use in giving them the results of culture, unless we also givethem those conditions under which culture can be realised. In thesecold, crowded cities of the North, the proper basis for morals, using theword in its wide Hellenic signification, is to be found in architecture, not in books. 

Still, it would be ungenerous not to recognise that Mary Carpenter gaveto the children of the poor not merely her learning, but her love. Inearly life, her biographer tells us, she had longed for the happiness ofbeing a wife and a mother; but later she became content that heraffection could be freely given to all who needed it, and the verse inthe prophecies, 'I have given thee children whom thou hast not borne, 'seemed to her to indicate what was to be her true mission. Indeed, sherather inclined to Bacon's opinion, that unmarried people do the bestpublic work. 'It is quite striking, ' she says in one of her letters, 'toobserve how much the useful power and influence of woman has developed oflate years. Unattached ladies, such as widows and unmarried women, havequite ample work to do in the world for the good of others to absorb alltheir powers. Wives and mothers have a very noble work given them byGod, and want no more. ' The whole passage is extremely interesting, andthe phrase 'unattached ladies' is quite delightful, and reminds one ofCharles Lamb. 

* * * * *

Ismay's Children is by the clever authoress of that wonderful littlestory Flitters, Tatters, and the Counsellor, a story which delighted therealists by its truth, fascinated Mr. Ruskin by its beauty, and remainsto the present day the most perfect picture of street-arab life in allEnglish prose fiction. The scene of the novel is laid in the south ofIreland, and the plot is extremely dramatic and ingenious. GodfreyMauleverer, a reckless young Irishman, runs away with Ismay D'Arcy, apretty, penniless governess, and is privately married to her in Scotland. Some time after the birth of her third child, Ismay died, and herhusband, who had never made his marriage public, nor taken any pains toestablish the legitimacy of his children, is drowned while yachting offthe coast of France. The care of Ismay's children then devolves on anold aunt, Miss Juliet D'Arcy, who brings them back to Ireland to claimtheir inheritance for them. But a sudden stroke of paralysis deprivesher of her memory, and she forgets the name of the little Scotch villagein which Ismay's informal marriage took place. So Tighe O'Malley holdsBarrettstown, and Ismay's children live in an old mill close to the greatpark of which they are the rightful heirs. The boy, who is calledGodfrey after his father, is a fascinating study, with his swarthyforeign beauty, his fierce moods of love and hate, his passionate pride, and his passionate tenderness. The account of his midnight ride to warnhis enemy of an impending attack of Moonlighters is most powerful andspirited; and it is pleasant to meet in modern fiction a character thathas all the fine inconsistencies of life, and is neither too fantastic anexception to be true, nor too ordinary a type to be common. Excellentalso, in its direct simplicity of rendering, is the picture of MissJuliet D'Arcy; and the scene in which, at the moment of her death, theold woman's memory returns to her is quite admirable, both in conceptionand in treatment. To me, however, the chief interest of the book lies inthe little lifelike sketches of Irish character with which it abounds. Modern realistic art has not yet produced a Hamlet, but at least it mayclaim to have studied Guildenstern and Rosencrantz very closely; and, forpure fidelity and truth to nature, nothing could be better than the minorcharacters in Ismay's Children. Here we have the kindly old priest whoarranges all the marriages in his parish, and has a strong objection topeople who insist on making long confessions; the important young curatefresh from Maynooth, who gives himself more airs than a bishop, and hasto be kept in order; the professional beggars, with their devout faith, their grotesque humour, and their incorrigible laziness; the shrewdshopkeeper, who imports arms in flour-barrels for the use of theMoonlighters and, as soon as he has got rid of them, gives information oftheir whereabouts to the police; the young men who go out at night to bedrilled by an Irish-American; the farmers with their wild land-hunger, bidding secretly against each other for every vacant field; thedispensary doctor, who is always regretting that he has not got a TrinityCollege degree; the plain girls, who want to go into convents; the prettygirls, who want to get married; and the shopkeepers' daughters, who wantto be thought young ladies. There is a whole pell-mell of men and women, a complete panorama of provincial life, an absolutely faithful picture ofthe peasant in his own home. This note of realism in dealing withnational types of character has always been a distinguishingcharacteristic of Irish fiction, from the days of Miss Edgeworth down toour own days, and it is not difficult to see in Ismay's Children sometraces of the influence of Castle Rack-rent. I fear, however, that fewpeople read Miss Edgeworth nowadays, though both Scott and Tourgenieffacknowledged their indebtedness to her novels, and her style is alwaysadmirable in its clearness and precision. 

* * * * *

Miss Leffler-Arnim's statement, in a lecture delivered recently at St. Saviour's Hospital, that 'she had heard of instances where ladies were sodetermined not to exceed the fashionable measurement that they hadactually held on to a cross-bar while their maids fastened the fifteen-inch corset, ' has excited a good deal of incredulity, but there isnothing really improbable in it. From the sixteenth century to our ownday there is hardly any form of torture that has not been inflicted ongirls, and endured by women, in obedience to the dictates of anunreasonable and monstrous Fashion. 'In order to obtain a real Spanishfigure, ' says Montaigne, 'what a Gehenna of suffering will not womenendure, drawn in and compressed by great coches entering the flesh; nay, sometimes they even die thereof. ' 'A few days after my arrival atschool, ' Mrs. Somerville tells us in her memoirs, 'although perfectlystraight and well made, I was enclosed in stiff stays, with a steel buskin front; while above my frock, bands drew my shoulders back till theshoulder-blades met. Then a steel rod with a semicircle, which wentunder my chin, was clasped to the steel busk in my stays. In thisconstrained state I and most of the younger girls had to prepare ourlessons'; and in the life of Miss Edgeworth we read that, being sent to acertain fashionable establishment, 'she underwent all the usual torturesof back-boards, iron collars and dumbs, and also (because she was a verytiny person) the unusual one of being hung by the neck to draw out themuscles and increase the growth, ' a signal failure in her case. Indeed, instances of absolute mutilation and misery are so common in the pastthat it is unnecessary to multiply them; but it is really sad to thinkthat in our own day a civilised woman can hang on to a cross-bar whileher maid laces her waist into a fifteen-inch circle. To begin with, thewaist is not a circle at all, but an oval; nor can there be any greatererror than to imagine that an unnaturally small waist gives an air ofgrace, or even of slightness; to the whole figure. Its effect, as arule, is simply to exaggerate the width of the shoulders and the hips;and those whose figures possess that stateliness which is calledstoutness by the vulgar, convert what is a quality into a defect byyielding to the silly edicts of Fashion on the subject of tight-lacing. The fashionable English waist, also, is not merely far too small, andconsequently quite out of proportion to the rest of the figure, but it isworn far too low down. I use the expression 'worn' advisedly, for awaist nowadays seems to be regarded as an article of apparel to be put onwhen and where one likes. A long waist always implies shortness of thelower limbs, and, from the artistic point of view, has the effect ofdiminishing the height; and I am glad to see that many of the mostcharming women in Paris are returning to the idea of the Directoire styleof dress. This style is not by any means perfect, but at least it hasthe merit of indicating the proper position of the waist. I feel quitesure that all English women of culture and position will set their facesagainst such stupid and dangerous practices as are related by MissLeffler-Arnim. Fashion's motto is: Il faut souffrir pour etre belle; butthe motto of art and of common-sense is: Il faut etre bete pour souffrir. 

* * * * *

Talking of Fashion, a critic in the Pall Mall Gazette expresses hissurprise that I should have allowed an illustration of a hat, coveredwith 'the bodies of dead birds, ' to appear in the first number of theWoman's World; and as I have received many letters on the subject, it isonly right that I should state my exact position in the matter. Fashionis such an essential part of the mundus muliebris of our day, that itseems to me absolutely necessary that its growth, development, and phasesshould be duly chronicled; and the historical and practical value of sucha record depends entirely upon its perfect fidelity to fact. Besides, itis quite easy for the children of light to adapt almost any fashionableform of dress to the requirements of utility and the demands of goodtaste. The Sarah Bernhardt tea-gown, for instance, figured in thepresent issue, has many good points about it, and the giganticdress-improver does not appear to me to be really essential to the mode;and though the Postillion costume of the fancy dress ball is absolutelydetestable in its silliness and vulgarity, the so-called Late Georgiancostume in the same plate is rather pleasing. I must, however, protestagainst the idea that to chronicle the development of Fashion implies anyapproval of the particular forms that Fashion may adopt. 

* * * * *

Mrs. Craik's article on the condition of the English stage will, I feelsure, be read with great interest by all who are watching the developmentof dramatic art in this country. It was the last thing written by theauthor of John Halifax, Gentleman, and reached me only a few days beforeher lamented death. That the state of things is such as Mrs. Craikdescribes, few will be inclined to deny; though, for my own part, I mustacknowledge that I see more vulgarity than vice in the tendencies of themodern stage; nor do I think it possible to elevate dramatic art bylimiting its subject-matter. On tue une litterature quand on luiinterdit la verite humaine. As far as the serious presentation of lifeis concerned, what we require is more imaginative treatment, greaterfreedom from theatric language and theatric convention. It may bequestioned, also, whether the consistent reward of virtue and punishmentof wickedness be really the healthiest ideal for an art that claims tomirror nature. However, it is impossible not to recognise the finefeeling that actuates every line of Mrs. Craik's article; and though onemay venture to disagree with the proposed method, one cannot butsympathise with the purity and delicacy of the thought, and the highnobility of the aim. 

* * * * *

The French Minister of Education, M. Spuller, has paid Racine a verygraceful and appropriate compliment, in naming after him the secondcollege that has been opened in Paris for the higher education of girls. Racine was one of the privileged few who was allowed to read thecelebrated Traite de l'Education des Filles before it appeared in print;he was charged, along with Boileau, with the task of revising the text ofthe constitution and rules of Madame de Maintenon's great college; it wasfor the Demoiselles de St. Cyr that he composed Athalie; and he devoted agreat deal of his time to the education of his own children. The LyceeRacine will, no doubt, become as important an institution as the LyceeFenelon, and the speech delivered by M. Spuller on the occasion of itsopening was full of the happiest augury for the future. M. Spuller dweltat great length on the value of Goethe's aphorism, that the test of agood wife is her capacity to take her husband's place and to become afather to his children, and mentioned that the thing that struck him mostin America was the wonderful Brooklyn Bridge, a superb titanic structure, which was completed under the direction of the engineer's wife, theengineer himself having died while the building of the bridge was inprogress. 'Il me semble, ' said M. Spuller, 'que la femme de l'ingenieurdu pont de Brooklyn a realise la pensee de Goethe, et que non seulementelle est devenue un pere pour ses enfants, mais un autre pere pourl'oeuvre admirable, vraiment unique, qui a immortalise le nom qu'elleportait avec son mari. ' M. Spuller also laid great stress on thenecessity of a thoroughly practical education, and was extremely severeon the 'Blue-stockings' of literature. 'Il ne s'agit pas de former icides "femmes savantes. " Les "femmes savantes" ont ete marquees pourjamais par un des plus grands genies de notre race d'une legere teinte deridicule. Non, ce n'est pas des femmes savantes que nous voulons: cesont tout simplement des femmes: des femmes dignes de ce pays de France, qui est la patrie du bons sens, de la mesure, et de la grace; des femmesayant la notion juste et le sens exquis du role qui doit leur appartenirdans la societe moderne. ' There is, no doubt, a great deal of truth inM. Spuller's observations, but we must not mistake a caricature for thereality. After all, Les Precieuses Ridicules contrasted very favourablywith the ordinary type of womanhood of their day, not merely in France, but also in England; and an uncritical love of sonnets is preferable, onthe whole, to coarseness, vulgarity and ignorance. 

* * * * *

I am glad to see that Miss Ramsay's brilliant success at Cambridge is notdestined to remain an isolated instance of what women can do inintellectual competitions with men. At the Royal University in Ireland, the Literature Scholarship of 100 pounds a year for five years has beenwon by Miss Story, the daughter of a North of Ireland clergyman. It ispleasant to be able to chronicle an item of Irish news that has nothingto do with the violence of party politics or party feeling, and thatshows how worthy women are of that higher culture and education which hasbeen so tardily and, in some instances, so grudgingly granted to them. 

* * * * *

The Empress of Japan has been ordering a whole wardrobe of fashionabledresses in Paris for her own use and the use of her ladies-in-waiting. The chrysanthemum (the imperial flower of Japan) has suggested the tintsof most of the Empress's own gowns, and in accordance with the colour-schemes of other flowers the rest of the costumes have been designed. Thesame steamer, however, that carries out the masterpieces of M. Worth andM. Felix to the Land of the Rising Sun, also brings to the Empress aletter of formal and respectful remonstrance from the English RationalDress Society. I trust that, even if the Empress rejects the sensiblearguments of this important Society, her own artistic feeling may induceher to reconsider her resolution to abandon Eastern for Western costume. 

* * * * *

I hope that some of my readers will interest themselves in theMinistering Children's League for which Mr. Walter Crane has done thebeautiful and suggestive design of The Young Knight. The best way tomake children good is to make them happy, and happiness seems to me anessential part of Lady Meath's admirable scheme. 

(1) Gossips with Girls and Maidens Betrothed and Free. By Lady Bellairs. (Blackwood and Sons. )

(2) A Modern Apostle and Other Poems. By Constance Naden. (Kegan Paul. )

(3) Mrs. Somerville and Mary Carpenter. By Phyllis Browne, Author ofWhat Girls Can Do, etc. (Cassell and Co. )

(4) Ismay's Children. By the Author of Hogan, M. P. ; Flitters, Tatters, and the Counsellor, etc. (Macmillan and Co. )

ARISTOTLE AT AFTERNOON TEA

(Pall Mall Gazette, December 16, 1887. )

In society, says Mr. Mahaffy, every civilised man and woman ought to feelit their duty to say something, even when there is hardly anything to besaid, and, in order to encourage this delightful art of brilliantchatter, he has published a social guide without which no debutante ordandy should ever dream of going out to dine. Not that Mr. Mahaffy'sbook can be said to be, in any sense of the word, popular. In discussingthis important subject of conversation, he has not merely followed thescientific method of Aristotle which is, perhaps, excusable, but he hasadopted the literary style of Aristotle for which no excuse is possible. There is, also, hardly a single anecdote, hardly a single illustration, and the reader is left to put the Professor's abstract rules intopractice, without either the examples or the warnings of history toencourage or to dissuade him in his reckless career. Still, the book canbe warmly recommended to all who propose to substitute the vice ofverbosity for the stupidity of silence. It fascinates in spite of itsform and pleases in spite of its pedantry, and is the nearest approach, that we know of, in modern literature to meeting Aristotle at anafternoon tea. 

As regards physical conditions, the only one that is considered by Mr. Mahaffy as being absolutely essential to a good conversationalist, is thepossession of a musical voice. Some learned writers have been of opinionthat a slight stammer often gives peculiar zest to conversation, but Mr. Mahaffy rejects this view and is extremely severe on every eccentricityfrom a native brogue to an artificial catchword. With his remarks on thelatter point, the meaningless repetition of phrases, we entirely agree. Nothing can be more irritating than the scientific person who is alwayssaying '_Exactly_ so, ' or the commonplace person who ends every sentencewith '_Don't you know_?' or the pseudo-artistic person who murmurs'_Charming, charming_, ' on the smallest provocation. It is, however, with the mental and moral qualifications for conversation that Mr. Mahaffy specially deals. Knowledge he, naturally, regards as an absoluteessential, for, as he most justly observes, 'an ignorant man is seldomagreeable, except as a butt. ' Upon the other hand, strict accuracyshould be avoided. 'Even a consummate liar, ' says Mr. Mahaffy, is abetter ingredient in a company than 'the scrupulously truthful man, whoweighs every statement, questions every fact, and corrects everyinaccuracy. ' The liar at any rate recognises that recreation, notinstruction, is the aim of conversation, and is a far more civilisedbeing than the blockhead who loudly expresses his disbelief in a storywhich is told simply for the amusement of the company. Mr. Mahaffy, however, makes an exception in favour of the eminent specialist and tellsus that intelligent questions addressed to an astronomer, or a puremathematician, will elicit many curious facts which will pleasantlybeguile the time. Here, in the interest of Society, we feel bound toenter a formal protest. Nobody, even in the provinces, should ever beallowed to ask an intelligent question about pure mathematics across adinner-table. A question of this kind is quite as bad as inquiringsuddenly about the state of a man's soul, a sort of coup which, as Mr. Mahaffy remarks elsewhere, 'many pious people have actually thought adecent introduction to a conversation. '

As for the moral qualifications of a good talker, Mr. Mahaffy, followingthe example of his great master, warns us against any disproportionateexcess of virtue. Modesty, for instance, may easily become a socialvice, and to be continually apologising for one's ignorance or stupidityis a grave injury to conversation, for, 'what we want to learn from eachmember is his free opinion on the subject in hand, not his own estimateof the value of that opinion. ' Simplicity, too, is not without itsdangers. The enfant terrible, with his shameless love of truth, the rawcountry-bred girl who always says what she means, and the plain, bluntman who makes a point of speaking his mind on every possible occasion, without ever considering whether he has a mind at all, are the fatalexamples of what simplicity leads to. Shyness may be a form of vanity, and reserve a development of pride, and as for sympathy, what can be moredetestable than the man, or woman, who insists on agreeing witheverybody, and so makes 'a discussion, which implies differences inopinion, ' absolutely impossible? Even the unselfish listener is apt tobecome a bore. 'These silent people, ' says Mr. Mahaffy, 'not only takeall they can get in Society for nothing, but they take it without thesmallest gratitude, and have the audacity afterwards to censure those whohave laboured for their amusement. ' Tact, which is an exquisite sense ofthe symmetry of things, is, according to Mr. Mahaffy, the highest andbest of all the moral conditions for conversation. The man of tact, hemost wisely remarks, 'will instinctively avoid jokes about Blue Beard' inthe company of a woman who is a man's third wife; he will never be guiltyof talking like a book, but will rather avoid too careful an attention togrammar and the rounding of periods; he will cultivate the art ofgraceful interruption, so as to prevent a subject being worn threadbareby the aged or the inexperienced; and should he be desirous of telling astory, he will look round and consider each member of the party, and ifthere be a single stranger present will forgo the pleasure of anecdotagerather than make the social mistake of hurting even one of the guests. Asfor prepared or premeditated art, Mr. Mahaffy has a great contempt for itand tells us of a certain college don (let us hope not at Oxford orCambridge) who always carried a jest-book in his pocket and had to referto it when he wished to make a repartee. Great wits, too, are often verycruel, and great humourists often very vulgar, so it will be better totry and 'make good conversation without any large help from thesebrilliant but dangerous gifts. '

In a tete-a-tete one should talk about persons, and in general Societyabout things. The state of the weather is always an excusable exordium, but it is convenient to have a paradox or heresy on the subject alwaysready so as to direct the conversation into other channels. Reallydomestic people are almost invariably bad talkers as their very virtuesin home life have dulled their interest in outer things. The very bestmothers will insist on chattering of their babies and prattling aboutinfant education. In fact, most women do not take sufficient interest inpolitics, just as most men are deficient in general reading. Still, anybody can be made to talk, except the very obstinate, and even acommercial traveller may be drawn out and become quite interesting. Asfor Society small talk, it is impossible, Mr. Mahaffy tells us, for anysound theory of conversation to depreciate gossip, 'which is perhaps themain factor in agreeable talk throughout Society. ' The retailing ofsmall personal points about great people always gives pleasure, and ifone is not fortunate enough to be an Arctic traveller or an escapedNihilist, the best thing one can do is to relate some anecdote of 'PrinceBismarck, or King Victor Emmanuel, or Mr. Gladstone. ' In the case ofmeeting a genius and a Duke at dinner, the good talker will try to raisehimself to the level of the former and to bring the latter down to hisown level. To succeed among one's social superiors one must have nohesitation in contradicting them. Indeed, one should make boldcriticisms and introduce a bright and free tone into a Society whosegrandeur and extreme respectability make it, Mr. Mahaffy remarks, aspathetically as inaccurately, 'perhaps somewhat dull. ' The bestconversationalists are those whose ancestors have been bilingual, likethe French and Irish, but the art of conversation is really within thereach of almost every one, except those who are morbidly truthful, orwhose high moral worth requires to be sustained by a permanent gravity ofdemeanour and a general dulness of mind. 

These are the broad principles contained in Mr. Mahaffy's clever littlebook, and many of them will, no doubt, commend themselves to our readers. The maxim, 'If you find the company dull, blame yourself, ' seems to ussomewhat optimistic, and we have no sympathy at all with the professionalstory-teller who is really a great bore at a dinner-table; but Mr. Mahaffy is quite right in insisting that no bright social intercourse ispossible without equality, and it is no objection to his book to say thatit will not teach people how to talk cleverly. It is not logic thatmakes men reasonable, nor the science of ethics that makes men good, butit is always useful to analyse, to formularise and to investigate. Theonly thing to be regretted in the volume is the arid and jejune characterof the style. If Mr. Mahaffy would only write as he talks, his bookwould be much pleasanter reading. 

The Principles of the Art of Conversation: A Social Essay. By J. P. Mahaffy. (Macmillan and Co. )

EARLY CHRISTIAN ART IN IRELAND

(Pall Mall Gazette, December 17, 1887. )

The want of a good series of popular handbooks on Irish art has long beenfelt, the works of Sir William Wilde, Petrie and others being somewhattoo elaborate for the ordinary student; so we are glad to notice theappearance, under the auspices of the Committee of Council on Education, of Miss Margaret Stokes's useful little volume on the early Christian artof her country. There is, of course, nothing particularly original inMiss Stokes's book, nor can she be said to be a very attractive orpleasing writer, but it is unfair to look for originality in primers, andthe charm of the illustrations fully atones for the somewhat heavy andpedantic character of the style. 

This early Christian art of Ireland is full of interest to the artist, the archaeologist and the historian. In its rudest forms, such as thelittle iron hand-bell, the plain stone chalice and the rough woodenstaff, it brings us back to the simplicity of the primitive ChristianChurch, while to the period of its highest development we owe the greatmasterpieces of Celtic metal-work. The stone chalice is now replaced bythe chalice of silver and gold; the iron bell has its jewel-studdedshrine, and the rough staff its gorgeous casing; rich caskets andsplendid bindings preserve the holy books of the Saints and, instead ofthe rudely carved symbol of the early missionaries, we have suchbeautiful works of art as the processional cross of Cong Abbey. Beautifulthis cross certainly is with its delicate intricacy of ornamentation, itsgrace of proportion and its marvel of mere workmanship, nor is there anydoubt about its history. From the inscriptions on it, which arecorroborated by the annals of Innisfallen and the book of Clonmacnoise, we learn that it was made for King Turlough O'Connor by a native artistunder the superintendence of Bishop O'Duffy, its primary object being toenshrine a portion of the true cross that was sent to the king in 1123. Brought to Cong some years afterwards, probably by the archbishop, whodied there in 1150, it was concealed at the time of the Reformation, butat the beginning of the present century was still in the possession ofthe last abbot, and at his death it was purchased by professor MacCullaghand presented by him to the museum of the Royal Irish Academy. Thiswonderful work is alone well worth a visit to Dublin, but not less lovelyis the chalice of Ardagh, a two-handled silver cup, absolutely classicalin its perfect purity of form, and decorated with gold and amber andcrystal and with varieties of cloisonne and champleve enamel. There isno mention of this cup, or of the so-called Tara brooch, in ancient Irishhistory. All that we know of them is that they were found accidentally, the former by a boy who was digging potatoes near the old Rath of Ardagh, the latter by a poor child who picked it up near the seashore. Theyboth, however, belong probably to the tenth century. 

Of all these works, as well as of the bell shrines, book-covers, sculptured crosses and illuminated designs in manuscripts, excellentpictures are given in Miss Stokes's handbook. The extremely interestingFiachal Phadrig, or shrine of St. Patrick's tooth, might have beenfigured and noted as an interesting example of the survival of ornament, and one of the old miniatures of the scribe or Evangelist writing wouldhave given an additional interest to the chapter on Irish MSS. On thewhole, however, the book is wonderfully well illustrated, and theordinary art student will be able to get some useful suggestions from it. Indeed, Miss Stokes, echoing the aspirations of many of the great Irisharchaeologists, looks forward to the revival of a native Irish school inarchitecture, sculpture, metal-work and painting. Such an aspiration is, of course, very laudable, but there is always a danger of these revivalsbeing merely artificial reproductions, and it may be questioned whetherthe peculiar forms of Irish ornamentation could be made at all expressiveof the modern spirit. A recent writer on house decoration has gravelysuggested that the British householder should take his meals in a Celticdining-room adorned with a dado of Ogham inscriptions, and such wickedproposals may serve as a warning to all who fancy that the reproductionof a form necessarily implies a revival of the spirit that gave the formlife and meaning, and who fail to recognise the difference between artand anachronisms. Miss Stokes's proposal for an ark-shaped church inwhich the mural painter is to repeat the arcades and 'follow thearchitectural compositions of the grand pages of the Eusebian canons inthe Book of Kells, ' has, of course, nothing grotesque about it, but it isnot probable that the artistic genius of the Irish people will, even when'the land has rest, ' find in such interesting imitations its healthiestor best expression. Still, there are certain elements of beauty inancient Irish art that the modern artist would do well to study. Thevalue of the intricate illuminations in the Book of Kells, as far astheir adaptability to modern designs and modern material goes, has beenvery much overrated, but in the ancient Irish torques, brooches, pins, clasps and the like, the modern goldsmith will find a rich and, comparatively speaking, an untouched field; and now that the Celticspirit has become the leaven of our politics, there is no reason why itshould not contribute something to our decorative art. This result, however, will not be obtained by a patriotic misuse of old designs, andeven the most enthusiastic Home Ruler must not be allowed to decorate hisdining-room with a dado of Oghams. 

Early Christian Art in Ireland. By Margaret Stokes. (Published for theCommittee of Council on Education by Chapman and Hall. )

LITERARY AND OTHER NOTES--III

(Woman's World, January 1888. )

Madame Ristori's Etudes et Souvenirs is one of the most delightful bookson the stage that has appeared since Lady Martin's charming volume on theShakespearian heroines. It is often said that actors leave nothingbehind them but a barren name and a withered wreath; that they subsistsimply upon the applause of the moment; that they are ultimately doomedto the oblivion of old play-bills; and that their art, in a word, dieswith them, and shares their own mortality. 'Chippendale, the cabinet-maker, ' says the clever author of Obiter Dicta, 'is more potent thanGarrick the actor. The vivacity of the latter no longer charms (save inBoswell); the chairs of the former still render rest impossible in ahundred homes. ' This view, however, seems to me to be exaggerated. Itrests on the assumption that acting is simply a mimetic art, and takes noaccount of its imaginative and intellectual basis. It is quite true, ofcourse, that the personality of the player passes away, and with it thatpleasure-giving power by virtue of which the arts exist. Yet theartistic method of a great actor survives. It lives on in tradition, andbecomes part of the science of a school. It has all the intellectuallife of a principle. In England, at the present moment, the influence ofGarrick on our actors is far stronger than that of Reynolds on ourpainters of portraits, and if we turn to France it is easy to discern thetradition of Talma, but where is the tradition of David?

Madame Ristori's memoirs, then, have not merely the charm that alwaysattaches to the autobiography of a brilliant and beautiful woman, buthave also a definite and distinct artistic value. Her analysis of thecharacter of Lady Macbeth, for instance, is full of psychologicalinterest, and shows us that the subtleties of Shakespearian criticism arenot necessarily confined to those who have views on weak endings andrhyming tags, but may also be suggested by the art of acting itself. Theauthor of Obiter Dicta seeks to deny to actors all critical insight andall literary appreciation. The actor, he tells us, is art's slave, nother child, and lives entirely outside literature, 'with its words forever on his lips, and none of its truths engraven on his heart. ' Butthis seems to me to be a harsh and reckless generalisation. Indeed, sofar from agreeing with it, I would be inclined to say that the mereartistic process of acting, the translation of literature back again intolife, and the presentation of thought under the conditions of action, isin itself a critical method of a very high order; nor do I think that astudy of the careers of our great English actors will really sustain thecharge of want of literary appreciation. It may be true that actors passtoo quickly away from the form, in order to get at the feeling that givesthe form beauty and colour, and that, where the literary critic studiesthe language, the actor looks simply for the life; and yet, how well thegreat actors have appreciated that marvellous music of words which inShakespeare, at any rate, is so vital an element of poetic power, if, indeed, it be not equally so in the case of all who have any claim to beregarded as true poets. 'The sensual life of verse, ' says Keats, in adramatic criticism published in the Champion, 'springs warm from the lipsof Kean, and to one learned in Shakespearian hieroglyphics, learned inthe spiritual portion of those lines to which Kean adds a sensualgrandeur, his tongue must seem to have robbed the Hybla bees and leftthem honeyless. ' This particular feeling, of which Keats speaks, isfamiliar to all who have heard Salvini, Sarah Bernhardt, Ristori, or anyof the great artists of our day, and it is a feeling that one cannot, Ithink, gain merely by reading the passage to oneself. For my own part, Imust confess that it was not until I heard Sarah Bernhardt in Phedre thatI absolutely realised the sweetness of the music of Racine. As for Mr. Birrell's statement that actors have the words of literature for ever ontheir lips, but none of its truths engraved on their hearts, all that onecan say is that, if it be true, it is a defect which actors share withthe majority of literary critics. 

The account Madame Ristori gives of her own struggles, voyages andadventures, is very pleasant reading indeed. The child of poor actors, she made her first appearance when she was three months old, beingbrought on in a hamper as a New Year's gift to a selfish old gentlemanwho would not forgive his daughter for having married for love. As, however, she began to cry long before the hamper was opened, the comedybecame a farce, to the immense amusement of the public. She nextappeared in a mediaeval melodrama, being then three years of age, and wasso terrified at the machinations of the villain that she ran away at themost critical moment. However, her stage-fright seems to havedisappeared, and we find her playing Silvio Pellico's Francesco, daRimini at fifteen, and at eighteen making her debut as Marie Stuart. Atthis time the naturalism of the French method was gradually displacingthe artificial elocution and academic poses of the Italian school ofacting. Madame Ristori seems to have tried to combine simplicity withstyle, and the passion of nature with the self-restraint of the artist. 'J'ai voulu fondre les deux manieres, ' she tells us, 'car je sentais quetoutes choses etant susceptibles de progres, l'art dramatique aussi etaitappele a subir des transformations. ' The natural development, however, of the Italian drama was almost arrested by the ridiculous censorship ofplays then existing in each town under Austrian or Papal rule. Theslightest allusion to the sentiment of nationality or the spirit offreedom was prohibited. Even the word patria was regarded astreasonable, and Madame Ristori tells us an amusing story of theindignation of a censor who was asked to license a play, in which a dumbman returns home after an absence of many years, and on his entrance uponthe stage makes gestures expressive of his joy in seeing his native landonce more. 'Gestures of this kind, ' said the censor, 'are obviously of avery revolutionary tendency, and cannot possibly be allowed. The onlygestures that I could think of permitting would be gestures expressive ofa dumb man's delight in scenery generally. '

The stage directions were accordingly altered, and the word 'landscape'substituted for 'native land'! Another censor was extremely severe on anunfortunate poet who had used the expression 'the beautiful Italian sky, 'and explained to him that 'the beautiful Lombardo-Venetian sky' was theproper official expression to use. Poor Gregory in Romeo and Juliet hadto be rechristened, because Gregory is a name dear to the Popes; and the

 Here I have a pilot's thumb, Wrecked as homeward he did come, of the first witch in Macbeth was ruthlessly struck out as containing anobvious allusion to the steersman of St. Peter's bark. Finally, boredand bothered by the political and theological Dogberrys of the day, withtheir inane prejudices, their solemn stupidity, and their entireignorance of the conditions necessary for the growth of sane and healthyart, Madame Ristori made up her mind to leave the stage. She, however, was extremely anxious to appear once before a Parisian audience, Parisbeing at that time the centre of dramatic activity, and after someconsideration left Italy for France in the year 1855. There she seems tohave been a great success, particularly in the part of Myrrha; classicalwithout being cold, artistic without being academic, she brought to theinterpretation of the character of Alfieri's great heroine the colour-element of passion, the form-element of style. Jules Janin was loud inhis praises, the Emperor begged Ristori to join the troupe of the ComedieFrancaise, and Rachel, with the strange narrow jealousy of her nature, trembled for her laurels. Myrrha was followed by Marie Stuart, and MarieStuart by Medea. In the latter part Madame Ristori excited the greatestenthusiasm. Ary Scheffer designed her costumes for her; and the Niobethat stands in the Uffizzi Gallery at Florence, suggested to MadameRistori her famous pose in the scene with the children. She would notconsent, however, to remain in France, and we find her subsequentlyplaying in almost every country in the world from Egypt to Mexico, fromDenmark to Honolulu. Her representations of classical plays seem to havebeen always immensely admired. When she played at Athens, the Kingoffered to arrange for a performance in the beautiful old theatre ofDionysos, and during her tour in Portugal she produced Medea before theUniversity of Coimbra. Her description of the latter engagement isextremely interesting. On her arrival at the University, she wasreceived by the entire body of the undergraduates, who still wear acostume almost mediaeval in character. Some of them came on the stage inthe course of the play as the handmaidens of Creusa, hiding their blackbeards beneath heavy veils, and as soon as they had finished their partsthey took their places gravely among the audience, to Madame Ristori'shorror, still in their Greek dress, but with their veils thrown back, andsmoking long cigars. 'Ce n'est pas la premiere fois, ' she says, 'quej'ai du empecher, par un effort de volonte, la tragedie de se terminer enfarce. ' Very interesting, also, is her account of the production ofMontanelli's Camma, and she tells an amusing story of the arrest of theauthor by the French police on the charge of murder, in consequence of atelegram she sent to him in which the words 'body of the victim'occurred. Indeed, the whole book is full of cleverly written stories, and admirable criticisms on dramatic art. I have quoted from the Frenchversion, which happens to be the one that lies before me, but whether inFrench or Italian the book is one of the most fascinating autobiographiesthat has appeared for some time, even in an age like ours when literaryegotism has been brought to such an exquisite pitch of perfection. 

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The New Purgatory and Other Poems, by Miss E. R. Chapman, is, in somerespects, a very remarkable little volume. It used to be said that womenwere too poetical by nature to make great poets, too receptive to bereally creative, too well satisfied with mere feeling to search after themarble splendour of form. But we must not judge of woman's poetic powerby her achievements in days when education was denied to her, for wherethere is no faculty of expression no art is possible. Mrs. Browning, thefirst great English poetess, was also an admirable scholar, though shemay not have put the accents on her Greek, and even in those poems thatseem most remote from classical life, such as Aurora Leigh, for instance, it is not difficult to trace the fine literary influence of a classicaltraining. Since Mrs. Browning's time, education has become, not theprivilege of a few women, but the inalienable inheritance of all; and, asa natural consequence of the increased faculty of expression therebygained, the women poets of our day hold a very high literary position. Curiously enough, their poetry is, as a rule, more distinguished forstrength than for beauty; they seem to love to grapple with the bigintellectual problems of modern life; science, philosophy and metaphysicsform a large portion of their ordinary subject-matter; they leave thetriviality of triolets to men, and try to read the writing on the wall, and to solve the last secret of the Sphinx. Hence Robert Browning, notKeats, is their idol; Sordello moves them more than the Ode on a GrecianUrn; and all Lord Tennyson's magic and music seems to them as nothingcompared with the psychological subtleties of The Ring and the Book, orthe pregnant questions stirred in the dialogue between Blougram andGigadibs. Indeed I remember hearing a charming young Girtonian, forgetting for a moment the exquisite lyrics in Pippa Passes, and thesuperb blank verse of Men and Women, state quite seriously that thereason she admired the author of Red-Cotton Night-Cap Country was that hehad headed a reaction against beauty in poetry!

Miss Chapman is probably one of Mr. Browning's disciples. She does notimitate him, but it is easy to discern his influence on her verse, andshe has caught something of his fine, strange faith. Take, for instance, her poem, A Strong-minded Woman:

 See her? Oh, yes!--Come this way--hush! this way, Here she is lying, Sweet--with the smile her face wore yesterday, As she lay dying. Calm, the mind-fever gone, and, praise God! gone All the heart-hunger; Looking the merest girl at forty-one-- You guessed her younger? Well, she'd the flower-bloom that children have, Was lithe and pliant, With eyes as innocent blue as they were brave, Resolved, defiant. Yourself--you worship art! Well, at that shrine She too bowed lowly, Drank thirstily of beauty, as of wine, Proclaimed it holy. But could you follow her when, in a breath, She knelt to science, Vowing to truth true service to the death, And heart-reliance? Nay, --then for you she underwent eclipse, Appeared as alien As once, before he prayed, those ivory lips Seemed to Pygmalion. 

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 Hear from your heaven, my dear, my lost delight, You who were woman To your heart's heart, and not more pure, more white, Than warmly human. How shall I answer? How express, reveal Your true life-story? How utter, if they cannot guess--not feel Your crowning glory? This way. Attend my words. The rich, we know, Do into heaven Enter but hardly; to the poor, the low, God's kingdom's given. Well, there's another heaven--a heaven on earth-- (That's love's fruition) Whereto a certain lack--a certain dearth-- Gains best admission. Here, too, she was too rich--ah, God! if less Love had been lent her!-- Into the realm of human happiness These look--not enter. 

Well, here we have, if not quite an echo, at least a reminiscence of themetre of The Grammarian's Funeral; and the peculiar blending together oflyrical and dramatic forms, seems essentially characteristic of Mr. Browning's method. Yet there is a distinct personal note running allthrough the poem, and true originality is to be found rather in the usemade of a model than in the rejection of all models and masters. Dansl'art comme dans la nature on est toujours fils de quelqu'un, and weshould not quarrel with the reed if it whispers to us the music of thelyre. A little child once asked me if it was the nightingale who taughtthe linnets how to sing. 

Miss Chapman's other poems contain a great deal that is interesting. Themost ambitious is The New Purgatory, to which the book owes its title. Itis a vision of a strange garden in which, cleansed and purified of allstain and shame, walk Judas of Cherioth, Nero the Lord of Rome, Ysabelthe wife of Ahab, and others, around whose names cling terrible memoriesof horror, or awful splendours of sin. The conception is fine, but thetreatment is hardly adequate. There are, however, some good strong linesin it, and, indeed, almost all of Miss Chapman's poems are worth reading, if not for their absolute beauty, at least for their intellectualintention. 

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Nothing is more interesting than to watch the change and development ofthe art of novel-writing in this nineteenth century--'this so-callednineteenth century, ' as an impassioned young orator once termed it, aftera contemptuous diatribe against the evils of modern civilisation. InFrance they have had one great genius, Balzac, who invented the modernmethod of looking at life; and one great artist, Flaubert, who is theimpeccable master of style; and to the influence of these two men we maytrace almost all contemporary French fiction. But in England we have hadno schools worth speaking of. The fiery torch lit by the Brontes has notbeen passed on to other hands; Dickens has influenced only journalism;Thackeray's delightful superficial philosophy, superb narrative power, and clever social satire have found no echoes; nor has Trollope left anydirect successors behind him--a fact which is not much to be regretted, however, as, admirable though Trollope undoubtedly is for rainyafternoons and tedious railway journeys, from the point of view ofliterature he is merely the perpetual curate of Pudlington Parva. As forGeorge Meredith, who could hope to reproduce him? His style is chaosillumined by brilliant flashes of lightning. As a writer he has masteredeverything, except language; as a novelist he can do everything, excepttell a story; as an artist he is everything, except articulate. Toostrange to be popular, too individual to have imitators, the author ofRichard Feverel stands absolutely alone. It is easy to disarm criticism, but he has disarmed the disciple. He gives us his philosophy through themedium of wit, and is never so pathetic as when he is humorous. To turntruth into a paradox is not difficult, but George Meredith makes all hisparadoxes truths, and no Theseus can thread his labyrinth, no OEdipussolve his secret. 

However, it is only fair to acknowledge that there are some signs of aschool springing up amongst us. This school is not native, nor does itseek to reproduce any English master. It may be described as the resultof the realism of Paris filtered through the refining influence ofBoston. Analysis, not action, is its aim; it has more psychology thanpassion, and it plays very cleverly upon one string, and this is thecommonplace. 

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As a reaction against this school, it is pleasant to come across a novellike Lady Augusta Noel's Hithersea Mere. If this story has any definitedefect, it comes from its delicacy and lightness of treatment. Anindustrious Bostonian would have made half a dozen novels out of it, andhave had enough left for a serial. Lady Augusta Noel is content tovivify her characters, and does not care about vivisection; she suggestsrather than explains; and she does not seek to make life too obviouslyrational. Romance, picturesqueness, charm--these are the qualities ofher book. As for its plot, it has so many plots that it is difficult todescribe them. We have the story of Rhona Somerville, the daughter of agreat popular preacher, who tries to write her father's life, and, onlooking over his papers and early diaries, finds struggle where sheexpected calm, and doubt where she looked for faith, and is afraid tokeep back the truth, and yet dares not publish it. Rhona is quitecharming; she is like a little flower that takes itself very seriously, and she shows us how thoroughly nice and natural a narrow-minded girl maybe. Then we have the two brothers, John and Adrian Mowbray. John is thehard-working, vigorous clergyman, who is impatient of all theories, brings his faith to the test of action, not of intellect, lives what hebelieves, and has no sympathy for those who waver or question--athoroughly admirable, practical, and extremely irritating man. Adrian isthe fascinating dilettante, the philosophic doubter, a sort of romanticrationalist with a taste for art. Of course, Rhona marries the brotherwho needs conversion, and their gradual influence on each other isindicated by a few subtle touches. Then we have the curious story ofOlga, Adrian Mowbray's first love. She is a wonderful and mystical girl, like a little maiden out of the Sagas, with the blue eyes and fair hairof the North. An old Norwegian nurse is always at her side, a sort ofLapland witch who teaches her how to see visions and to interpret dreams. Adrian mocks at this superstition, as he calls it, but as a consequenceof disregarding it, Olga's only brother is drowned skating, and she neverspeaks to Adrian again. The whole story is told in the most suggestiveway, the mere delicacy of the touch making what is strange seem real. Themost delightful character in the whole book, however, is a girl calledHilary Marston, and hers also is the most tragic tale of all. Hilary islike a little woodland faun, half Greek and half gipsy; she knows thenote of every bird, and the haunt of every animal; she is terribly out ofplace in a drawing-room, but is on intimate terms with every youngpoacher in the district; squirrels come and sit on her shoulder, which ispretty, and she carries ferrets in her pockets, which is dreadful; shenever reads a book, and has not got a single accomplishment, but she isfascinating and fearless, and wiser, in her own way, than any pedant orbookworm. This poor little English Dryad falls passionately in love witha great blind helpless hero, who regards her as a sort of pleasant tom-boy; and her death is most touching and pathetic. Lady Augusta Noel hasa charming and winning style, her descriptions of Nature are quiteadmirable, and her book is one of the most pleasantly-written novels thathas appeared this winter. 

Miss Alice Corkran's Margery Merton's Girlhood has the same lightness oftouch and grace of treatment. Though ostensibly meant for young people, it is a story that all can read with pleasure, for it is true withoutbeing harsh, and beautiful without being affected, and its rejection ofthe stronger and more violent passions of life is artistic rather thanascetic. In a word, it is a little piece of true literature, as daintyas it is delicate, and as sweet as it is simple. Margery Merton isbrought up in Paris by an old maiden aunt, who has an elaborate theory ofeducation, and strict ideas about discipline. Her system is an excellentone, being founded on the science of Darwin and the wisdom of Solomon, but it comes to terrible grief when put into practice; and finally shehas to procure a governess, Madame Reville, the widow of a great andunappreciated French painter. From her Margery gets her first feelingfor art, and the chief interest of the book centres round a competitionfor an art scholarship, into which Margery and the other girls of theconvent school enter. Margery selects Joan of Arc as her subject; and, rather to the horror of the good nuns, who think that the saint shouldhave her golden aureole, and be as gorgeous and as ecclesiastical asbright paints and bad drawing can make her, the picture represents acommon peasant girl, standing in an old orchard, and listening inignorant terror to the strange voices whispering in her ear. The scenein which she shows her sketch for the first time to the art master andthe Mother Superior is very cleverly rendered indeed, and showsconsiderable dramatic power. 

Of course, a good deal of opposition takes place, but ultimately Margeryhas her own way and, in spite of a wicked plot set on foot by a jealouscompetitor, who persuades the Mother Superior that the picture is notMargery's own work, she succeeds in winning the prize. The whole accountof the gradual development of the conception in the girl's mind, and thevarious attempts she makes to give her dream its perfect form, isextremely interesting and, indeed, the book deserves a place among whatSir George Trevelyan has happily termed 'the art-literature' of our day. Mr. Ruskin in prose, and Mr. Browning in poetry, were the first who drewfor us the workings of the artist soul, the first who led us from thepainting or statue to the hand that fashioned it, and the brain that gaveit life. They seem to have made art more expressive for us, to haveshown us a passionate humanity lying behind line and colour. Theirs wasthe seed of this new literature, and theirs, too, is its flower; but itis pleasant to note their influence on Miss Corkran's little story, inwhich the creation of a picture forms the dominant motif. 

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Mrs. Pfeiffer's Women and Work is a collection of most interesting essayson the relation to health and physical development of the highereducation of girls, and the intellectual or more systematised effort ofwoman. Mrs. Pfeiffer, who writes a most admirable prose style, deals insuccession with the sentimental difficulty, with the economic problem, and with the arguments of physiologists. She boldly grapples withProfessor Romanes, whose recent article in the Nineteenth Century, on theleading characters which mentally differentiate men and women, attractedso much attention, and produces some very valuable statistics fromAmerica, where the influence of education on health has been mostcarefully studied. Her book is a most important contribution to thediscussion of one of the great social problems of our day. The extendedactivity of women is now an accomplished fact; its results are on theirtrial; and Mrs. Pfeiffer's excellent essays sum up the situation verycompletely, and show the rational and scientific basis of the movementmore clearly and more logically than any other treatise I have as yetseen. 

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It is interesting to note that many of the most advanced modern ideas onthe subject of the education of women are anticipated by Defoe in hiswonderful Essay upon Projects, where he proposes that a college for womenshould be erected in every county in England, and ten colleges of thekind in London. 'I have often thought of it, 'he says, ' as one of themost barbarous customs in the world that we deny the advantages oflearning to women. Their youth is spent to teach them to stitch and sew, or make baubles. They are taught to read, indeed, and perhaps to writetheir names or so, and that is the height of a woman's education. And Iwould but ask any who slight the sex for their understanding, "What is aman (a gentleman I mean) good for that is taught no more?" What has thewoman done to forfeit the privilege of being taught? Shall we upbraidwomen with folly when it is only the error of this inhuman custom thathindered them being made wiser?' Defoe then proceeds to elaborate hisscheme for the foundation of women's colleges, and enters into minutedetails about the architecture, the general curriculum, and thediscipline. His suggestion that the penalty of death should be inflictedon any man who ventured to make a proposal of marriage to any of the girlstudents during term time possibly suggested the plot of Lord Tennyson'sPrincess, so its harshness may be excused, and in all other respects hisideas are admirable. I am glad to see that this curious little volumeforms one of the National Library series. In its anticipations of manyof our most modern inventions it shows how thoroughly practical alldreamers are. 

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I am sorry to see that Mrs. Fawcett deprecates the engagement of ladiesof education as dressmakers and milliners, and speaks of it as beingdetrimental to those who have fewer educational advantages. I myselfwould like to see dressmaking regarded not merely as a learnedprofession, but as a fine art. To construct a costume that will be atonce rational and beautiful requires an accurate knowledge of theprinciples of proportion, a thorough acquaintance with the laws ofhealth, a subtle sense of colour, and a quick appreciation of the properuse of materials, and the proper qualities of pattern and design. Thehealth of a nation depends very largely on its mode of dress; theartistic feeling of a nation should find expression in its costume quiteas much as in its architecture; and just as the upholstering tradesmanhas had to give place to the decorative artist, so the ordinary milliner, with her lack of taste and lack of knowledge, her foolish fashions andher feeble inventions, will have to make way for the scientific andartistic dress designer. Indeed, so far from it being wise to discouragewomen of education from taking up the profession of dressmakers, it isexactly women of education who are needed, and I am glad to see in thenew technical college for women at Bedford, millinery and dressmaking areto be taught as part of the ordinary curriculum. There has also beenstarted in London a Society of Lady Dressmakers for the purpose ofteaching educated girls and women, and the Scientific Dress Associationis, I hear, doing very good work in the same direction. 

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I have received some very beautiful specimens of Christmas books fromMessrs. Griffith and Farran. Treasures of Art and Song, edited by RobertEllice Mack, is a real edition de luxe of pretty poems and prettypictures; and Through the Year is a wonderfully artistic calendar. 

Messrs. Hildesheimer and Faulkner have also sent me Rhymes and Roses, illustrated by Ernest Wilson and St. Clair Simmons; Cape Town Dicky, achild's book, with some very lovely pictures by Miss Alice Havers; awonderful edition of The Deserted Village, illustrated by Mr. CharlesGregory and Mr. Hines; and some really charming Christmas cards, those byMiss Alice Havers, Miss Edwards, and Miss Dealy being especially good. 

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The most perfect and the most poisonous of all modern French poets onceremarked that a man can live for three days without bread, but that noone can live for three days without poetry. This, however, can hardly besaid to be a popular view, or one that commends itself to that curiouslyuncommon quality which is called common-sense. I fancy that most people, if they do not actually prefer a salmis to a sonnet, certainly like theirculture to repose on a basis of good cookery, and as there is somethingto be said for this attitude, I am glad to see that several ladies areinteresting themselves in cookery classes. Mrs. Marshall's brilliantlectures are, of course, well known, and besides her there is MadameLebour-Fawssett, who holds weekly classes in Kensington. Madame Fawssettis the author of an admirable little book, entitled Economical FrenchCookery for Ladies, and I am glad to hear that her lectures are sosuccessful. I was talking the other day to a lady who works a great dealat the East End of London, and she told me that no small part of thepermanent misery of the poor is due to their entire ignorance of thecleanliness and economy necessary for good cooking. 

* * * * *

The Popular Ballad Concert Society has been reorganised under the name ofthe Popular Musical Union. Its object will be to train the workingclasses thoroughly in the enjoyment and performance of music, and toprovide the inhabitants of the crowded districts of the East End withconcerts and oratorios, to be performed as far as possible by trainedmembers of the working classes; and, though money is urgently required, it is proposed to make the Society to a certain degree self-supporting bygiving something in the form of high-class concerts in return forsubscriptions and donations. The whole scheme is an excellent one, and Ihope that the readers of the Woman's World will give it their valuablesupport. Mrs. Ernest Hart is the secretary, and the treasurer is theRev. S. Barnett. 

(1) Etudes et Souvenirs. By Madame Ristori. (Paul Ollendorff. )

(2) The New Purgatory and Other Poems. By Elizabeth Rachel Chapman. (Fisher Unwin. )

(3) Hithersea Mere. By Lady Augusta Noel, Author of Wandering Willie, From Generation to Generation, etc. (Macmillan and Co. )

(4) Margery Merton's Girlhood. By Alice Corkran. (Blackie and Son. )

(5) Women and Work. By Emily Pfeiffer. (Trubner and Co. )

(6) Treasures of Art and Song. Edited by Robert Ellice Mack. (Griffithand Farren. )

(7) Rhymes and Roses. Illustrated by Ernest Wilson and St. Clair Simons. Cape Town Dicky. Illustrated by Alice Havers. The Deserted Pillage. Illustrated by Charles Gregory and John Hines. (Hildesheimer andFaulkner. )

THE POETS' CORNER--IV

(Pall Mall Gazette, January 20, 1888. )

A cynical critic once remarked that no great poet is intelligible and nolittle poet worth understanding, but that otherwise poetry is anadmirable thing. This, however, seems to us a somewhat harsh view of thesubject. Little poets are an extremely interesting study. The best ofthem have often some new beauty to show us, and though the worst of themmay bore yet they rarely brutalise. Poor Folks' Lives, for instance, bythe Rev. Frederick Langbridge, is a volume that could do no possible harmto any one. These poems display a healthy, rollicking, G. R. Sims toneof feeling, an almost unbounded regard for the converted drunkard, and astrong sympathy with the sufferings of the poor. As for their theology, it is of that honest, downright and popular kind, which in theserationalistic days is probably quite as useful as any other form oftheological thought. Here is the opening of a poem called A StreetSermon, which is an interesting example of what muscular Christianity cando in the sphere of verse-making:

 What, God fight shy of the city? He's t' other side up I guess; If you ever want to find Him, Whitechapel's the right address. 

Those who prefer pseudo-poetical prose to really prosaic poetry will wishthat Mr. Dalziel had converted most of his Pictures in the Fire intoleaders for the Daily Telegraph, as, from the literary point of view, they have all the qualities dear to the Asiatic school. What a splendidleader the young lions of Fleet Street would have made out of ThePrestige of England, for instance, a poem suggested by the opening of theZulu war in 1879. 

 Now away sail our ships far away o'er the sea, Far away with our gallant and brave; The loud war-cry is sounding like wild revelrie, And our heroes dash on to their grave; For the fierce Zulu tribes have arisen in their might, And in thousands swept down on our few; But these braves only yielded when crushed in the fight, Man to man to their colours were true. 

The conception of the war-cry sounding 'like wild revelrie' is quite inthe true Asiatic spirit, and indeed the whole poem is full of the daringEnglish of a special correspondent. Personally, we prefer Mr. Dalzielwhen he is not quite so military. The Fairies, for instance, is a verypretty poem, and reminds us of some of Dicky Doyle's charming drawings, and Nat Bentley is a capital ballad in its way. The Irish poems, however, are rather vulgar and should be expunged. The Celtic element inliterature is extremely valuable, but there is absolutely no excuse forshrieking 'Shillelagh!' and 'O Gorrah!'

Women must Weep, by Professor Harald Williams, has the most dreadfulcover of any book that we have come across for some time past. It ispossibly intended to symbolise the sorrow of the world, but it merelysuggests the decorative tendencies of an undertaker and is as depressingas it is detestable. However, as the cowl does not make the monk, so thebinding, in the case of the Savile Club school, does not make the poet, and we open the volume without prejudice. The first poem that we come tois a vigorous attack on those wicked and misguided people who believethat Beauty is its own reason for existing, and that Art should have noother aim but her own perfection. Here are some of the Professor'sgravest accusations:

 Why do they patch, in their fatal choice, When at secrets such the angels quake, But a play of the Vision and the Voice?-- Oh, it's all for Art's sake. 

 Why do they gather what should be left, And leave behind what they ought to take, And exult in the basest blank or theft?-- Oh, it's all for Art's sake. 

It certainly must be admitted that to 'patch' or to 'exult in the basestblank' is a form of conduct quite unbefitting an artist, the veryobscurity and incomprehensible character of such a crime adding somethingto its horror. However, while fully recognising the wickedness of'patching' we cannot but think that Professor Harald Williams is happierin his criticism of life than he is in his art criticism. His poemBetween the Banks, for instance, has a touch of sincerity and finefeeling that almost atones for its over-emphasis. 

Mr. Buchan's blank verse drama Joseph and His Brethren bears noresemblance to that strange play on the same subject which Mr. Swinburneso much admires. Indeed, it may be said to possess all the fataloriginality of inexperience. However, Mr. Buchan does not leave us inany doubt about his particular method of writing. 'As to the dialogue, 'he says, 'I have put the language of real life into the mouths of thespeakers, except when they may be supposed to be under strong emotion;then their utterances become more rapid--broken--figurative--in shortmore poetical. ' Well, here is the speech of Potiphar's wife under strongemotion:

 ZULEEKHA (seizing him). Love me! or death! Ha! dost thou think thou wilt not, and yet live? By Isis, no. And thou wilt turn away, Iron, marble mockman! Ah! I hold thy life! Love feeds on death. It swallows up all life, Hugging, or killing. I to woo, and thou-- Unhappy me! Oh!

The language here is certainly rapid and broken, and the expression'marble mockman' is, we suppose, figurative, but the passage can scarcelybe described as poetical, though it fulfils all Mr. Buchan's conditions. Still, tedious as Zuleekha and Joseph are, the Chorus of Ancients is muchworse. These 'ideal spectators' seem to spend their lives in utteringthose solemn platitudes that with the aged pass for wisdom. The chiefoffenders are the members of what Mr. Buchan calls 'The2nd. --Semi-chorus, ' who have absolutely no hesitation in interrupting theprogress of the play with observations of this kind:

 2ND. --semi-chorus

 Ah! but favour extreme shown to one Among equals who yet stand apart, Awakeneth, say ye, if naturally, The demons--jealousy, envy, hate, -- In the breast of those passed by. 

It is a curious thing that when minor poets write choruses to a play theyshould always consider it necessary to adopt the style and language of abad translator. We fear that Mr. Bohn has much to answer for. 

God's Garden is a well-meaning attempt to use Nature for theological andeducational purposes. It belongs to that antiquated school of thoughtthat, in spite of the discoveries of modern science, invites the sluggardto look at the ant, and the idle to imitate the bee. It is full of falseanalogies and dull eighteenth-century didactics. It tells us that theflowering cactus should remind us that a dwarf may possess mental andmoral qualities, that the mountain ash should teach us the preciousfruits of affliction, and that a fond father should learn from theexample of the chestnut that the most beautiful children often turn outbadly! We must admit that we have no sympathy with this point of view, and we strongly protest against the idea that

 The flaming poppy, with its black core, tells Of anger's flushing face, and heart of sin. 

The worst use that man can make of Nature is to turn her into a mirrorfor his own vices, nor are Nature's secrets ever disclosed to those whoapproach her in this spirit. However, the author of this irritatinglittle volume is not always botanising and moralising in this recklessand improper fashion. He has better moments, and those who sympathisewith the Duke of Westminster's efforts to provide open spaces for thepeople, will no doubt join in the aspiration--

 God bless wise Grosvenors whose hearts incline, Workmen to fete, and grateful souls refine;

though they may regret that so noble a sentiment is expressed in soinadequate a form. 

It is difficult to understand why Mr. Cyrus Thornton should have calledhis volume Voices of the Street. However, poets have a perfect right tochristen their own children, and if the wine is good no one shouldquarrel with the bush. Mr. Thornton's verse is often graceful andmelodious, and some of his lines, such as--

 And the wise old Roman bondsman saw no terror in the dead-- Children when the play was over, going softly home to bed, have a pleasant Tennysonian ring. The Ballad of the Old Year is ratherdepressing. 'Bury the Old Year Solemnly' has been said far too often, and the sentiment is suitable only for Christmas crackers. The bestthing in the book is The Poet's Vision of Death, which is quite above theaverage. 

Mrs. Dobell informs us that she has already published sixteen volumes ofpoetry and that she intends to publish two more. The volume that nowlies before us is entitled In the Watches of the Night, most of the poemsthat it contains having been composed 'in the neighbourhood of the sea, between the hours of ten and two o'clock. ' Judging from the followingextract we cannot say that we consider this a very favourable time forinspiration, at any rate in the case of Mrs. Dobell:

 Were Anthony Trollope and George Eliot Alive--which unfortunately they are not-- As regards the subject of 'quack-snubbing, ' you know, To support me I am sure they hadn't been slow-- For they, too, hated the wretched parasite That fattens on the freshest, the most bright Of the blossoms springing from the--Public Press!-- And that oft are flowers that even our quacks should bless!

(1) Poor Folks' Lives. By the Rev. Frederick Langbridge. (Simpkin, Marshall and Co. )

(2) Pictures in the Fire. By George Dalziel. (Privately Printed. )

(3) Women Must Weep. By Professor F. Harald Williams. (SwanSonnenschein and Co. )

(4) Joseph and His Brethren: a Trilogy. By Alexander Buchan. (Digby andLong. )

(5) God's Garden. By Heartsease. (James Nisbet and Co. )

(6) Voices of the Street. By Cyrus Thornton. (Elliot Stock. )

(7) In the Watches of the Night. By Mrs. Horace Dobell. (Remington andCo. )

LITERARY AND OTHER NOTES--IV

(Woman's World, February 1888. )

Canute The Great, by Michael Field, is in many respects a reallyremarkable work of art. Its tragic element is to be found in life, notin death; in the hero's psychological development, not in his moraldeclension or in any physical calamity; and the author has borrowed frommodern science the idea that in the evolutionary struggle for existencethe true tragedy may be that of the survivor. Canute, the rough generousViking, finds himself alienated from his gods, his forefathers, his verydreams. With centuries of Pagan blood in his veins, he sets himself tothe task of becoming a great Christian governor and lawgiver to men; andyet he is fully conscious that, while he has abandoned the noble impulsesof his race, he still retains that which in his nature is most fierce orfearful. It is not by faith that he reaches the new creed, nor throughgentleness that he seeks after the new culture. The beautiful Christianwoman whom he has made queen of his life and lands teaches him no mercy, and knows nothing of forgiveness. It is sin and not suffering thatpurifies him--mere sin itself. 'Be not afraid, ' he says in the lastgreat scene of the play:

 'Be not afraid; I have learnt this, sin is a mighty bond 'Twixt God and man. Love that has ne'er forgiven Is virgin and untender; spousal passion Becomes acquainted with life's vilest things, Transmutes them, and exalts. Oh, wonderful, This touch of pardon, --all the shame cast out; The heart a-ripple with the gaiety, The leaping consciousness that Heaven knows all, And yet esteems us royal. Think of it-- The joy, the hope!'

This strange and powerful conception is worked out in a manner as strongas it is subtle; and, indeed, almost every character in the play seems tosuggest some new psychological problem. The mere handling of the verseis essentially characteristic of our modern introspective method, as itpresents to us, not thought in its perfected form, but the involutions ofthought seeking for expression. We seem to witness the very workings ofthe mind, and to watch the passion struggling for utterance. In plays ofthis kind (plays that are meant to be read, not to be acted) it must beadmitted that we often miss that narrative and descriptive element whichin the epic is so great a charm, and, indeed, may be said to be almostessential to the perfect literary presentation of any story. Thiselement the Greek managed to retain by the introduction of chorus andmessenger; but we seem to have been unable to invent any substitute forit. That there is here a distinct loss cannot, I think, be denied. Thereis something harsh, abrupt, and inartistic in such a stage-direction as'Canute strangles Edric, flings his body into the stream, and gazes out. 'It strikes no dramatic note, it conveys no picture, it is meagre andinadequate. If acted it might be fine; but as read, it is unimpressive. However, there is no form of art that has not got its limitations, andthough it is sad to see the action of a play relegated to a formalfootnote, still there is undoubtedly a certain gain in psychologicalanalysis and psychological concentration. 

It is a far cry from the Knutlinga Saga to Rossetti's note-book, butMichael Field passes from one to the other without any loss of power. Indeed, most readers will probably prefer The Cup of Water, which is thesecond play in this volume, to the earlier historical drama. It is morepurely poetical; and if it has less power, it has certainly more beauty. Rossetti conceived the idea of a story in which a young king fallspassionately in love with a little peasant girl who gives him a cup ofwater, and is by her beloved in turn, but being betrothed to a noblelady, he yields her in marriage to his friend, on condition that once ayear--on the anniversary of their meeting--she brings him a cup of water. The girl dies in childbirth, leaving a daughter who grows into hermother's perfect likeness, and comes to meet the king when he is hunting. Just, however, as he is about to take the cup from her hand, a secondfigure, in her exact likeness, but dressed in peasant's clothes, steps toher side, looks in the king's face, and kisses him on the mouth. Hefalls forward on his horse's neck, and is lifted up dead. Michael Fieldhas struck out the supernatural element so characteristic of Rossetti'sgenius, and in some other respects modified for dramatic purposesmaterial Rossetti left unused. The result is a poem of exquisite andpathetic grace. Cara, the peasant girl, is a creation as delicate as itis delightful, and it deserves to rank beside the Faun of Callirhoe. Asfor the young king who loses all the happiness of his life through onenoble moment of unselfishness, and who recognised as he stands overCara's dead body that

 women are not chattels, To deal with as one's generosity May prompt or straiten, . . . 

and that

 we must learn To drink life's pleasures if we would be pure, he is one of the most romantic figures in all modern dramatic work. Looked at from a purely technical point of view, Michael Field's verse issometimes lacking in music, and has no sustained grandeur of movement;but it is extremely dramatic, and its method is admirably suited toexpress those swift touches of nature and sudden flashes of thought whichare Michael Field's distinguishing qualities. As for the moral containedin these plays, work that has the rich vitality of life has alwayssomething of life's mystery also; it cannot be narrowed down to a formalcreed, nor summed up in a platitude; it has many answers, and more thanone secret. 

* * * * *

Miss Frances Martin's Life of Elizabeth Gilbert is an extremelyinteresting book. Elizabeth Gilbert was born at a time when, as herbiographer reminds us, kindly and intelligent men and women could gravelyimplore the Almighty to 'take away' a child merely because it was blind;when they could argue that to teach the blind to read, or to attempt toteach them to work, was to fly in the face of Providence; and her wholelife was given to the endeavour to overcome this prejudice andsuperstition; to show that blindness, though a great privation, is notnecessarily a disqualification; and that blind men and women can learn, labour, and fulfil all the duties of life. Before her day all that theblind were taught was to commit texts from the Bible to memory. She sawthat they could learn handicrafts, and be made industrious andself-supporting. She began with a small cellar in Holborn, at the rentof eighteenpence a week, but before her death she could point to largeand well-appointed workshops in almost every city of England where blindmen and women are employed, where tools have been invented by or modifiedfor them, and where agencies have been established for the sale of theirwork. The whole story of her life is full of pathos and of beauty. Shewas not born blind, but lost her sight through an attack of scarlet feverwhen she was three years old. For a long time she could not realise herposition, and we hear of the little child making earnest appeals to betaken 'out of the dark room, ' or to have a candle lighted; and once shewhispered to her father, 'If I am a very good little girl, may I see mydoll to-morrow?' However, all memory of vision seems to have faded fromher before she left the sick-room, though, taught by those around her, she soon began to take an imaginary interest in colour, and a very realone in form and texture. An old nurse is still alive who remembersmaking a pink frock for her when she was a child, her delight at itsbeing pink and her pleasure in stroking down the folds; and when in 1835the young Princess Victoria visited Oxford with her mother, Bessie, asshe was always called, came running home, exclaiming, 'Oh, mamma, I haveseen the Duchess of Kent, and she had on a brown silk dress. ' Heryouthful admiration of Wordsworth was based chiefly upon his love offlowers, but also on personal knowledge. When she was about ten yearsold, Wordsworth went to Oxford to receive the honorary degree of D. C. L. From the University. He stayed with Dr. Gilbert, then Principal ofBrasenose, and won Bessie's heart the first day by telling at the dinnertable how he had almost leapt off the coach in Bagley Wood to gather theblue veronica. But she had a better reason for remembering that visit. One day she was in the drawing-room alone, and Wordsworth entered. For amoment he stood silent before the blind child, the little sensitive face, with its wondering, inquiring look, turned towards him. Then he gravelysaid, 'Madam, I hope I do not disturb you. ' She never forgot that'Madam'--grave, solemn, almost reverential. 

As for the great practical work of her life, the amelioration of thecondition of the blind, Miss Martin gives a wonderful account of hernoble efforts and her noble success; and the volume contains a great manyinteresting letters from eminent people, of which the followingcharacteristic note from Mr. Ruskin is not the least interesting:

 DENMARK HILL, 2nd September 1871. 

 MADAM, --I am obliged by your letter, and I deeply sympathise with the objects of the institution over which you preside. But one of my main principles of work is that every one must do their best, and spend their all in their own work, and mine is with a much lower race of sufferers than you plead for--with those who 'have eyes and see not. '--I am, Madam, your faithful servant, J. Ruskin. 

Miss Martin is a most sympathetic biographer, and her book should be readby all who care to know the history of one of the remarkable women of ourcentury. 

* * * * *

Ourselves and Our Neighbours is a pleasant volume of social essays fromthe pen of one of the most graceful and attractive of all Americanpoetesses, Mrs. Louise Chandler Moulton. Mrs. Moulton, who has a verylight literary touch, discusses every important modern problem--fromSociety rosebuds and old bachelors, down to the latest fashions inbonnets and in sonnets. The best chapter in the book is that entitled'The Gospel of Good Gowns, ' which contains some very excellent remarks onthe ethics of dress. Mrs. Moulton sums up her position in the followingpassage:--

 The desire to please is a natural characteristic of unspoiled womanhood. 'If I lived in the woods, I should dress for the trees, ' said a woman widely known for taste and for culture. Every woman's dress should be, and if she has any ideality will be, an expression of herself. . . . The true gospel of dress is that of fitness and taste. Pictures are painted, and music is written, and flowers are fostered, that life may be made beautiful. Let women delight our eyes like pictures, be harmonious as music, and fragrant as flowers, that they also may fulfil their mission of grace and of beauty. By companionship with beautiful thoughts shall their tastes be so formed that their toilets will never be out of harmony with their means or their position. They will be clothed almost as unconsciously as the lilies of the field; but each one will be herself, and there will be no more uniformity in their attire than in their faces. 

The modern Dryad who is ready to 'dress for the trees' seems to me acharming type; but I hardly think that Mrs. Moulton is right when shesays that the woman of the future will be clothed 'almost asunconsciously as the lilies of the field. ' Possibly, however, she meansmerely to emphasise the distinction between dressing and dressing-up, adistinction which is often forgotten. 

* * * * *

Warring' Angels is a very sad and suggestive story. It contains noimpossible heroine and no improbable hero, but is simply a faithfultranscript from life, a truthful picture of men and women as they are. Darwin could not have enjoyed it, as it does not end happily. There is, at least, no distribution of cakes and ale in the last chapter. But, then, scientific people are not always the best judges of literature. They seem to think that the sole aim of art should be to amuse, and hadthey been consulted on the subject would have banished Melpomene fromParnassus. It may be admitted, however, that not a little of our modernart is somewhat harsh and painful. Our Castaly is very salt with tears, and we have bound the brows of the Muses with cypress and with yew. Weare often told that we are a shallow age, yet we have certainly thesaddest literature of all the ages, for we have made Truth and not Beautythe aim of art, and seem to value imitation more than imagination. Thistendency is, of course, more marked in fiction than it is in poetry. Beauty of form is always in itself a source of joy; the mere _technique_of verse has an imaginative and spiritual element; and life must, to acertain degree, be transfigured before it can find its expression inmusic. But ordinary fiction, rejecting the beauty of form in order torealise the facts of life, seems often to lack the vital element ofdelight, to miss that pleasure-giving power in virtue of which the artsexist. It would not, however, be fair to regard Warring Angels simply asa specimen of literary photography. It has a marked distinction ofstyle, a definite grace and simplicity of manner. There is nothing crudein it, though it is to a certain degree inexperienced; nothing violent, though it is often strong. The story it has to tell has frequently beentold before, but the treatment makes it new; and Lady Flower, for whosewhite soul the angels of good and evil are at war, is admirablyconceived, and admirably drawn. 

* * * * *

A Song of Jubilee and Other Poems contains some pretty, picturesqueverses. Its author is Mrs. De Courcy Laffan, who, under the name of Mrs. Leith Adams, is well known as a novelist and story writer. The JubileeOde is quite as good as most of the Jubilee Odes have been, and some ofthe short poems are graceful. This from The First Butterfly is pretty:

 O little bird without a song! I love Thy silent presence, floating in the light-- A living, perfect thing, when scarcely yet The snow-white blossom crawls along the wall, And not a daisy shows its star-like head Amid the grass. 

Miss Bella Duffy's Life of Madame de Stael forms part of that admirable'Eminent Women' Series, which is so well edited by Mr. John H. Ingram. There is nothing absolutely new in Miss Duffy's book, but this was not tobe expected. Unpublished correspondence, that delight of the eagerbiographer, is not to be had in the case of Madame de Stael, the DeBroglie family having either destroyed or successfully concealed all thepapers which might have revealed any facts not already in the possessionof the world. Upon the other hand, the book has the excellent quality ofcondensation, and gives us in less than two hundred pages a very goodpicture of Madame de Stael and her day. Miss Duffy's criticism ofCorinne is worth quoting:

 Corinne is a classic of which everybody is bound to speak with respect. The enormous admiration which it exacted at the time of its appearance may seem somewhat strange in this year of grace; but then it must be remembered that Italy was not the over-written country it has since become. Besides this, Madame de Stael was the most conspicuous personage of her day. Except Chateaubriand, she had nobody to dispute with her the palm of literary glory in France. Her exile, her literary circle, her courageous opinions, had kept the eyes of Europe fixed on her for years, so that any work from her pen was sure to excite the liveliest curiosity. 

 Corinne is a kind of glorified guide-book, with some of the qualities of a good novel. It is very long winded, but the appetite of the age was robust in that respect, and the highly-strung emotions of the hero and heroine could not shock a taste which had been formed by the Sorrows of Werther. It is extremely moral, deeply sentimental, and of a deadly earnestness--three characteristics which could not fail to recommend it to a dreary and ponderous generation, the most deficient in taste that ever trod the earth. 

 But it is artistic in the sense that the interest is concentrated from first to last on the central figure, and the drama, such as it is, unfolds itself naturally from its starting point, which is the contrast between the characters of Oswald and Corinne. 

The 'dreary and ponderous generation, the most deficient in taste thatever trod the earth, ' seems to me a somewhat exaggerated mode ofexpression, but 'glorified guide-book' is a not unfelicitous descriptionof the novel that once thrilled Europe. Miss Duffy sums up her opinionof Madame de Stael as a writer in the following passage:

 Her mind was strong of grasp and wide in range, but continuous effort fatigued it. She could strike out isolated sentences alternately brilliant, exhaustive, and profound, but she could not link them to other sentences so as to form an organic whole. Her thought was definite singly, but vague as a whole. She always saw things separately, and tried to combine them arbitrarily, and it is generally difficult to follow out any idea of hers from its origin to its end. Her thoughts are like pearls of price profusely scattered, or carelessly strung together, but not set in any design. On closing one of her books, the reader is left with no continuous impression. He has been dazzled and delighted, enlightened also by flashes; but the horizons disclosed have vanished again, and the outlook is enriched by no new vistas. 

 Then she was deficient in the higher qualities of the imagination. She could analyse, but not characterise; construct, but not create. She could take one defect like selfishness, or one passion like love, and display its workings; or she could describe a whole character, like Napoleon's, with marvellous penetration; but she could not make her personages talk, or act like human beings. She lacked pathos, and had no sense of humour. In short, hers was a mind endowed with enormous powers of comprehension, and an amazing richness of ideas, but deficient in perception of beauty, in poetry, and in true originality. She was a great social personage, but her influence on literature was not destined to be lasting, because, in spite of foreseeing too much, she had not the true prophetic sense of proportion, and confused the things of the present with those of the future--the accidental with the enduring. 

I cannot but think that in this passage Miss Duffy rather underratesMadame de Stael's influence on the literature of the nineteenth century. It is true that she gave our literature no new form, but she was one ofthose who gave it a new spirit, and the romantic movement owes her nosmall debt. However, a biography should be read for its pictures morethan for its criticisms, and Miss Duffy shows a remarkable narrativepower, and tells with a good deal of esprit the wonderful adventures ofthe brilliant woman whom Heine termed 'a whirlwind in petticoats. '

* * * * *

Mr. Harcourt's reprint of John Evelyn's Life of Mrs. Godolphin is awelcome addition to the list of charming library books. Mr. Harcourt'sgrandfather, the Archbishop of York, himself John Evelyn's great-great-grandson, inherited the manuscript from his distinguished ancestor, andin 1847 entrusted it for publication to Samuel Wilberforce, then Bishopof Oxford. As the book has been for a long time out of print, this newedition is sure to awake fresh interest in the life of the noble andvirtuous lady whom John Evelyn so much admired. Margaret Godolphin wasone of the Queen's Maids of Honour at the Court of Charles II. , and wasdistinguished for the delicate purity of her nature, as well as for herhigh intellectual attainments. Some of the extracts Evelyn gives fromher Diary seem to show an austere, formal, almost ascetic spirit; but itwas inevitable that a nature so refined as hers should have turned inhorror from such ideals of life as were presented by men like Buckinghamand Rochester, like Etheridge, Killigrew, and Sedley, like the Kinghimself, to whom she could scarcely bring herself to speak. After hermarriage she seems to have become happier and brighter, and her earlydeath makes her a pathetic and interesting figure in the history of thetime. Evelyn can see no fault in her, and his life of her is the mostwonderful of all panegyrics. 

* * * * *

Amongst the Maids-of-Honour mentioned by John Evelyn is Frances Jennings, the elder sister of the great Duchess of Marlborough. Miss Jennings, whowas one of the most beautiful women of her day, married first Sir GeorgeHamilton, brother of the author of the Memoires de Grammont, andafterwards Richard Talbot, who was made Duke of Tyrconnel by James II. William's successful occupation of Ireland, where her husband was LordDeputy, reduced her to poverty and obscurity, and she was probably thefirst Peeress who ever took to millinery as a livelihood. She had adressmaker's shop in the Strand, and, not wishing to be detected, sat ina white mask and a white dress, and was known by the name of the 'WhiteWidow. '

I was reminded of the Duchess when I read Miss Emily Faithfull'sadmirable article in Gralignani on 'Ladies as Shopkeepers. ' 'The mostdaring innovation in England at this moment, ' says Miss Faithfull, 'isthe lady shopkeeper. At present but few people have had the courage tobrave the current social prejudice. We draw such fine distinctionsbetween the wholesale and retail traders that our cotton-spinners, calico-makers, and general merchants seem to think that they belong to a totallydifferent sphere, from which they look down on the lady who has hadsufficient brains, capital, and courage to open a shop. But the oldworld moves faster than it did in former days, and before the end of thenineteenth century it is probable that a gentlewoman will be recognisedin spite of her having entered on commercial pursuits, especially as weare growing accustomed to see scions of our noblest families on our StockExchange and in tea-merchants' houses; one Peer of the realm is now doingan extensive business in coals, and another is a cab proprietor. ' MissFaithfull then proceeds to give a most interesting account of the Londondairy opened by the Hon. Mrs. Maberley, of Madame Isabel's millineryestablishment, and of the wonderful work done by Miss Charlotte Robinson, who has recently been appointed Decorator to the Queen. About threeyears ago, Miss Faithfull tells us, Miss Robinson came to Manchester, andopened a shop in King Street, and, regardless of that bugbear whichterrifies most women--the loss of social status--she put up her own nameover the door, and without the least self-assertion quietly entered intocompetition with the sterner sex. The result has been eminentlysatisfactory. This year Miss Robinson has exhibited at Saltaire and atManchester, and next year she proposes to exhibit at Glasgow, and, possibly, at Brussels. At first she had some difficulty in making peopleunderstand that her work is really commercial, not charitable; she feelsthat, until a healthy public opinion is created, women will pose as'destitute ladies, ' and never take a dignified position in any callingthey adopt. Gentlemen who earn their own living are not spoken of as'destitute, ' and we must banish this idea in connection with ladies whoare engaged in an equally honourable manner. Miss Faithfull concludesher most valuable article as follows: 'The more highly educated our womenof business are, the better for themselves, their work, and the wholecommunity. Many of the professions to which ladies have hitherto turnedare overcrowded, and when once the fear of losing social position isboldy disregarded, it will be found that commercial life offers a varietyof more or less lucrative employments to ladies of birth and capital, whofind it more congenial to their tastes and requirements to invest theirmoney and spend their energies in a business which yields a fair returnrather than sit at home content with a scanty pittance. '

I myself entirely agree with Miss Faithfull, though I feel that there issomething to be said in favour of the view put forward by Lady Shrewsburyin the Woman's World, {289} and a great deal to be said in favour of Mrs. Joyce's scheme for emigration. Mr. Walter Besant, if we are to judgefrom his last novel, is of Lady Shrewsbury's way of thinking. 

* * * * *

I hope that some of my readers will be interested in Miss BeatriceCrane's little poem, Blush-Roses, for which her father, Mr. Walter Crane, has done so lovely and graceful a design. Mrs. Simon, of Birkdale Park, Southport, tells me that she offered a prize last term at her school forthe best sonnet on any work of art. The poems were sent to ProfessorDowden, who awarded the prize to the youthful authoress of the followingsonnet on Mr. Watts's picture of Hope:

 She sits with drooping form and fair bent head, Low-bent to hear the faintly-sounding strain That thrills her with the sweet uncertain pain Of timid trust and restful tears unshed. Around she feels vast spaces. Awe and dread

 Encompass her. And the dark doubt she fain Would banish, sees the shuddering fear remain, And ever presses near with stealthy tread. 

 But not for ever will the misty space Close down upon her meekly-patient eyes. The steady light within them soon will ope Their heavy lids, and then the sweet fair face, Uplifted in a sudden glad surprise, Will find the bright reward which comes to Hope. 

I myself am rather inclined to prefer this sonnet on Mr. Watts's Psyche. The sixth line is deficient; but, in spite of the faulty _technique_, there is a great deal that is suggestive in it:

 Unfathomable boundless mystery, Last work of the Creator, deathless, vast, Soul--essence moulded of a changeful past; Thou art the offspring of Eternity; Breath of his breath, by his vitality Engendered, in his image cast, Part of the Nature-song whereof the last Chord soundeth never in the harmony. 'Psyche'! Thy form is shadowed o'er with pain Born of intensest longing, and the rain Of a world's weeping lieth like a sea Of silent soundless sorrow in thine eyes. Yet grief is not eternal, for clouds rise From out the ocean everlastingly. 

I have to thank Mr. William Rossetti for kindly allowing me to reproduceDante Gabriel Rossetti's drawing of the authoress of Goblin Market; andthanks are also due to Mr. Lafayette, of Dublin, for the use of hisphotograph of H. R. H. The Princess of Wales in her Academic Robes asDoctor of Music, which served as our frontispiece last month, and toMessrs. Hills and Saunders, of Oxford, and Mr. Lord and Mr. Blanchard, ofCambridge, for a similar courtesy in the case of the article on GreekPlays at the Universities. 

(1) Canute the Great. By Michael Field. (Bell and Sons. )

(2) Life of Elizabeth Gilbert. By Frances Martin. (Macmillan and Co. )

(3) Ourselves and Our Neighbours. By Louise Chandler Moulton. (Ward andDowney. )

(4) Warring Angels. (Fisher Unwin. )

(5) A Song of Jubilee and Other Poems. By Mrs. De Courcy Laffan. (KeganPaul. )

(6) Life of Madame de Stael. By Bella Duffy. 'Eminent Women' Series. 

(7) Life of Mrs. Godolphin. By John Evelyn, Esq. , of Wooton. Edited byWilliam Harcourt of Nuneham. (Sampson Low, Marston and Co. )

THE POETS' CORNER--V

(Pall Mall Gazette, February 15, 1888. )

Mr. Heywood's Salome seems to have thrilled the critics of the UnitedStates. From a collection of press notices prefixed to the volume welearn that Putnam's Magazine has found in it 'the simplicity and grace ofnaked Grecian statues, ' and that Dr. Jos. G. Cogswell, LL. D. , hasdeclared that it will live to be appreciated 'as long as the Englishlanguage endures. ' Remembering that prophecy is the most gratuitous formof error, we will not attempt to argue with Dr. Jos. G. Cogswell, LL. D. , but will content ourselves with protesting against such a detestableexpression as 'naked Grecian statues. ' If this be the literary style ofthe future the English language will not endure very long. As for thepoem itself, the best that one can say of it is that it is a triumph ofconscientious industry. From an artistic point of view it is a verycommonplace production indeed, and we must protest against such blankverse as the following:

 From the hour I saw her first, I was entranced, Or embosomed in a charmed world, circumscribed By its proper circumambient atmosphere, Herself its centre, and wide pervading spirit. The air all beauty of colour held dissolved, And tints distilled as dew are shed by heaven. 

Mr. Griffiths' Sonnets and Other Poems are very simple, which is a goodthing, and very sentimental, which is a thing not quite so good. As ageneral rule, his verse is full of pretty echoes of other writers, but inone sonnet he makes a distinct attempt to be original and the result isextremely depressing. 

 Earth wears her grandest robe, by autumn spun, Like some stout matron who of youth has run The course, . . . 

is the most dreadful simile we have ever come across even in poetry. Mr. Griffiths should beware of originality. Like beauty, it is a fatal gift. 

Imitators of Mr. Browning are, unfortunately, common enough, butimitators of Mr. And Mrs. Browning combined are so very rare that we haveread Mr. Francis Prevost's Fires of Green Wood with great interest. Hereis a curious reproduction of the manner of Aurora Leigh:

 But Spring! that part at least our unchaste eyes Infer from some wind-blown philactery, (It wears its breast bare also)--chestnut buds, Pack'd in white wool as though sent here from heaven, Stretching wild stems to reach each climbing lark That shouts against the fading stars. 

And here is a copy of Mr. Browning's mannerisms. We do not like it quiteso well:

 If another Save all bother, Hold that perhaps loaves grow like parsnips: Call the baker Heaven's care-taker, Live, die; Death may show him where the farce nips. Not I; truly He may duly Into church or church-day shunt God; Chink his pocket, Win your locket;-- Down we go together to confront God. 

Yet, in spite of these ingenious caricatures there are some good poems, or perhaps we should say some good passages, in Mr. Prevost's volume. TheWhitening of the Thorn-tree, for instance, opens admirably, and is, insome respects, a rather remarkable story. We have no doubt that some dayMr. Prevost will be able to study the great masters without stealing fromthem. 

Mr. John Cameron Grant has christened himself 'England's Empire Poet, 'and, lest we should have any doubts upon the subject, tells us that he'dare not lie, ' a statement which in a poet seems to show a great want ofcourage. Protection and Paper-Unionism are the gods of Mr. Grant'sidolatry, and his verse is full of such fine fallacies and masterlymisrepresentations that he should be made Laureate to the Primrose Leagueat once. Such a stanza as--

 Ask the ruined Sugar-worker if he loves the foreign beet-- Rather, one can hear him answer, would I see my children eat--

would thrill any Tory tea-party in the provinces, and it would bedifficult for the advocates of Coercion to find a more appropriate or amore characteristic peroration for a stump speech than

 We have not to do with justice, right depends on point of view, The one question for our thought is, what's our neighbour going to do. 

The hymn to the Union Jack, also, would make a capital leaflet fordistribution in boroughs where the science of heraldry is absolutelyunknown, and the sonnet on Mr. Gladstone is sure to be popular with allwho admire violence and vulgarity in literature. It is quite worthy ofThersites at his best. 

Mr. Evans's Caesar Borgia is a very tedious tragedy. Some of thepassages are in the true 'Ercles' vein, ' like the following:

 CAESAR (starting up). Help, Michelotto, help! Begone! Begone! Fiends! torments! devils! Gandia! What, Gandia? O turn those staring eyes away. See! See He bleeds to death! O fly! Who are those fiends That tug me by the throat? O! O! O! O! (Pauses. )

But, as a rule, the style is of a more commonplace character. The otherpoems in the volume are comparatively harmless, though it is sad to findShakespeare's 'Bacchus with pink eyne' reappearing as 'pinky-eyedSilenus. '

The Cross and the Grail is a collection of poems on the subject oftemperance. Compared to real poetry these verses are as 'water untowine, ' but no doubt this was the effect intended. The illustrations arequite dreadful, especially one of an angel appearing to a young man fromChicago who seems to be drinking brown sherry. 

Juvenal in Piccadilly and The Excellent Mystery are two fierce socialsatires and, like most satires, they are the product of the corruptionthey pillory. The first is written on a very convenient principle. Blankspaces are left for the names of the victims and these the reader canfill up as he wishes. 

 Must--bluster, --give the lie, --wear the night out, --sneer!

is an example of this anonymous method. It does not seem to us veryeffective. The Excellent Mystery is much better. It is full of cleverepigrammatic lines, and its wit fully atones for its bitterness. It ishardly a poem to quote but it is certainly a poem to read. 

The Chronicle of Mites is a mock-heroic poem about the inhabitants of adecaying cheese who speculate about the origin of their species and holdlearned discussions upon the meaning of evolution and the Gospelaccording to Darwin. This cheese-epic is a rather unsavoury productionand the style is at times so monstrous and so realistic that the authorshould be called the Gorgon-Zola of literature. 

(1) Salome. By J. C. Heywood. (Kegan Paul. )

(2) Sonnets and Other Poems. By William Griffiths. (Digby and Long. )

(3) Fires of Green Wood. By Francis Prevost. (Kegan Paul. )

(4) Vanclin and Other Verses. By John Cameron Grant. (E. W. Allen. )

(5) Caesar Borgia. By W. Evans, M. A. (William Maxwell and Son. )

(6) The Cross and the Grail. (Women's Temperance Association, Chicago. )

(7) Juvenal in Piccadilly. By Oxoniensis. (Vizetelly and Co. )

(8) The Excellent Mystery: A Matrimonial Satire. By Lord Pimlico. (Vizetelly and Co. )

(9) The Chronicle of Mites. By James Aitchison. (Kegan Paul. )

VENUS OR VICTORY

(Pall Mall Gazette, February 24, 1888. )

There are certain problems in archaeology that seem to possess a realromantic interest, and foremost among these is the question of the so-called Venus of Melos. Who is she, this marble mutilated goddess whomGautier loved, to whom Heine bent his knee? What sculptor wrought her, and for what shrine? Whose hands walled her up in that rude niche wherethe Melian peasant found her? What symbol of her divinity did she carry?Was it apple of gold or shield of bronze? Where is her city and what washer name among gods and men? The last writer on this fascinating subjectis Mr. Stillman, who in a most interesting book recently published inAmerica, claims that the work of art in question is no sea-born and foam-born Aphrodite, but the very Victory Without Wings that once stood in thelittle chapel outside the gates of the Acropolis at Athens. So long agoas 1826, that is to say six years after the discovery of the statue, theVenus hypothesis was violently attacked by Millingen, and from that timeto this the battle of the archaeologists has never ceased. Mr. Stillman, who fights, of course, under Millingen's banner, points out that thestatue is not of the Venus type at all, being far too heroic in characterto correspond to the Greek conception of Aphrodite at any period of theirartistic development, but that it agrees distinctly with certain well-known statues of Victory, such as the celebrated 'Victory of Brescia. 'The latter is in bronze, is later, and has the wings, but the type isunmistakable, and though not a reproduction it is certainly arecollection of the Melian statue. The representation of Victory on thecoin of Agathocles is also obviously of the Melian type, and in themuseum of Naples is a terra-cotta Victory in almost the identical actionand drapery. As for Dumont d'Urville's statement that, when the statuewas discovered, one hand held an apple and the other a fold of thedrapery, the latter is obviously a mistake, and the whole evidence on thesubject is so contradictory that no reliance can be placed on thestatement made by the French Consul and the French naval officers, noneof whom seems to have taken the trouble to ascertain whether the arm andhand now in the Louvre were really found in the same niche as the statueat all. At any rate, these fragments seem to be of extremely inferiorworkmanship, and they are so imperfect that they are quite worthless asdata for measure or opinion. So far, Mr. Stillman is on old ground. Hisreal artistic discovery is this. In working about the Acropolis ofAthens, some years ago, he photographed among other sculptures themutilated Victories in the Temple of Nike Apteros, the 'WinglessVictory, ' the little Ionic temple in which stood that statue of Victoryof which it was said that '_the Athenians made her without wings that shemight never leave Athens_. ' Looking over the photographs afterwards, when the impression of the comparatively diminutive size had passed, hewas struck with the close resemblance of the type to that of the Melianstatue. Now, this resemblance is so striking that it cannot bequestioned by any one who has an eye for form. There are the same largeheroic proportions, the same ampleness of physical development, and thesame treatment of drapery, and there is also that perfect spiritualkinship which, to any true antiquarian, is one of the most valuable modesof evidence. Now it is generally admitted on both sides that the Melianstatue is probably Attic in its origin, and belongs certainly to theperiod between Phidias and Praxiteles, that is to say, to the age ofScopas, if it be not actually the work of Scopas himself; and as it is toScopas that these bas-reliefs have been always attributed, the similarityof style can, on Mr. Stillman's hypothesis, be easily accounted for. 

As regards the appearance of the statue in Melos, Mr. Stillman points outthat Melos belonged to Athens as late as she had any Greek allegiance, and that it is probable that the statue was sent there for concealment onthe occasion of some siege or invasion. When this took place, Mr. Stillman does not pretend to decide with any degree of certainty, but itis evident that it must have been subsequent to the establishment of theRoman hegemony, as the brickwork of the niche in which the statue wasfound is clearly Roman in character, and before the time of Pausanias andPliny, as neither of these antiquaries mentions the statue. Accepting, then, the statue as that of the Victory Without Wings, Mr. Stillmanagrees with Millingen in supposing that in her left hand she held abronze shield, the lower rim of which rested on the left knee where somemarks of the kind are easily recognisable, while with her right hand shetraced, or had just finished tracing, the names of the great heroes ofAthens. Valentin's objection, that if this were so the left thigh wouldincline outwards so as to secure a balance, Mr. Stillman meets partly bythe analogy of the Victory of Brescia and partly by the evidence ofNature herself; for he has had a model photographed in the same positionas the statue and holding a shield in the manner he proposes in hisrestoration. The result is precisely the contrary to that which Valentinassumes. Of course, Mr. Stillman's solution of the whole matter must notbe regarded as an absolutely scientific demonstration. It is simply aninduction in which a kind of artistic instinct, not communicable orequally valuable to all people, has had the greatest part, but to thismode of interpretation archaeologists as a class have been far tooindifferent; and it is certain that in the present case it has given us atheory which is most fruitful and suggestive. 

The little temple of Nike Apteros has had, as Mr. Stillman reminds us, adestiny unique of its kind. Like the Parthenon, it was standing littlemore than two hundred years ago, but during the Turkish occupation it wasrazed, and its stones all built into the great bastion which covered thefront of the Acropolis and blocked up the staircase to the Propylaea. Itwas dug out and restored, nearly every stone in its place, by two Germanarchitects during the reign of Otho, and it stands again just asPausanias described it on the spot where old AEgeus watched for thereturn of Theseus from Crete. In the distance are Salamis and AEgina, and beyond the purple hills lies Marathon. If the Melian statue beindeed the Victory Without Wings, she had no unworthy shrine. 

There are some other interesting essays in Mr. Stillman's book on thewonderful topographical knowledge of Ithaca displayed in the Odyssey, anddiscussions of this kind are always interesting as long as there is noattempt to represent Homer as the ordinary literary man; but the articleon the Melian statue is by far the most important and the mostdelightful. Some people will, no doubt, regret the possibility of thedisappearance of the old name, and as Venus not as Victory will stillworship the stately goddess, but there are others who will be glad to seein her the image and ideal of that spiritual enthusiasm to which Athensowed her liberty, and by which alone can liberty be won. 

On the Track of Ulysses; together with an Excursion in Quest of the So-called Venus of Melos. By W. J. Stillman. (Houghton, Mifflin and Co. , Boston. )

LITERARY AND OTHER NOTES--V

(Woman's World, March 1888. )

The Princess Emily Ruete of Oman and Zanzibar, whose efforts to introducewomen doctors into the East are so well known, has just published a mostinteresting account of her life, under the title of Memoirs of an ArabianPrincess. The Princess is the daughter of the celebrated Sejid Said, Imam of Mesket and Sultan of Zanzibar, and her long residence in Germanyhas given her the opportunity of comparing Eastern with Westerncivilisation. She writes in a very simple and unaffected manner; andthough she has many grievances against her brother, the present Sultan(who seems never to have forgiven her for her conversion to Christianityand her marriage with a German subject), she has too much tact, esprit, and good humour to trouble her readers with any dreary record of familyquarrels and domestic differences. Her book throws a great deal of lighton the question of the position of women in the East, and shows that muchof what has been written on this subject is quite inaccurate. One of themost curious passages is that in which the Princess gives an account ofher mother:

 My mother was a Circassian by birth, who in early youth had been torn away from her home. Her father had been a farmer, and she had always lived peacefully with her parents and her little brother and sister. War broke out suddenly, and the country was overrun by marauding bands. On their approach, the family fled into an underground place, as my mother called it--she probably meant a cellar, which is not known in Zanzibar. Their place of refuge was, however, invaded by a merciless horde, the parents were slain, and the children carried off by three mounted Arnauts. 

 She came into my father's possession when quite a child, probably at the tender age of seven or eight years, as she cast her first tooth in our house. She was at once adopted as playmate by two of my sisters, her own age, with whom she was educated and brought up. Together with them she learnt to read, which raised her a good deal above her equals, who, as a rule, became members of our family at the age of sixteen or eighteen years, or older still, when they had outgrown whatever taste they might once have had for schooling. She could scarcely be called pretty; but she was tall and shapely, had black eyes, and hair down to her knees. Of a very gentle disposition, her greatest pleasure consisted in assisting other people, in looking after and nursing any sick person in the house; and I well remember her going about with her books from one patient to another, reading prayers to them. 

 She was in great favour with my father, who never refused her anything, though she interceded mostly for others; and when she came to see him, he always rose to meet her half-way--a distinction he conferred but very rarely. She was as kind and pious as she was modest, and in all her dealings frank and open. She had another daughter besides myself, who had died quite young. Her mental powers were not great, but she was very clever at needlework. She had always been a tender and loving mother to me, but this did not hinder her from punishing me severely when she deemed it necessary. 

 She had many friends at Bet-il-Mtoni, which is rarely to be met with in an Arab harem. She had the most unshaken and firmest trust in God. When I was about five years old, I remember a fire breaking out in the stables close by, one night while my father was at his city residence. A false alarm spread over the house that we, too, were in imminent danger; upon which the good woman hastened to take me on her arm, and her big kuran (we pronounce the word thus) on the other, and hurried into the open air. On the rest of her possessions she set no value in this hour of danger. 

Here is a description of Schesade, the Sultan's second legitimate wife:

 She was a Persian Princess of entrancing beauty, and of inordinate extravagance. Her little retinue was composed of one hundred and fifty cavaliers, all Persians, who lived on the ground floor; with them she hunted and rode in the broad day--rather contrary to Arab notions. The Persian women are subjected to quite a Spartan training in bodily exercise; they enjoy great liberty, much more so than Arab women, but they are also more rude in mind and action. 

 Schesade is said to have carried on her extravagant style of life beyond bounds; her dresses, cut always after the Persian fashion, were literally covered with embroideries of pearls. A great many of these were picked up nearly every morning by the servants in her rooms, where she had dropped them from her garments, but the Princess would never take any of these precious jewels back again. She did not only drain my father's exchequer most wantonly, but violated many of our sacred laws; in fact, she had only married him for his high station and wealth, and had loved some one else all the time. Such a state of things could, of course, only end in a divorce; fortunately Schesade had no children of her own. There is a rumour still current among us that beautiful Schesade was observed, some years after this event, when my father carried on war in Persia, and had the good fortune of taking the fortress of Bender Abbas on the Persian Gulf, heading her troops, and taking aim at the members of our family herself. 

Another of the remarkable women mentioned by the Princess was herstepmother, Azze-bint-Zef, who seems to have completely ruled the Sultan, and to have settled all questions of home and foreign policy; while hergreat-aunt, the Princess Asche, was regent of the empire during theSultan's minority, and was the heroine of the siege of Mesket. Of herthe Princess gives the following account:

 Dressed in man's clothes, she inspected the outposts herself at night, she watched and encouraged the soldiers in all exposed places, and was saved several times only by the speed of her horse in unforeseen attacks. One night she rode out, oppressed with care, having just received information that the enemy was about to attempt an entrance into the city by means of bribery that night, and with intent to massacre all; and now she went to convince herself of the loyalty of her troops. Very cautiously she rode up to a guard, requesting to speak to the 'Akid' (the officer in charge), and did all in her power to seduce him from his duty by great offers of reward on the part of the besiegers. The indignation of the brave man, however, completely allayed her fears as to the fidelity of the troops, but the experiment nearly cost her her own life. The soldiers were about to massacre the supposed spy on the spot, and it required all her presence of mind to make good her escape. 

 The situation grew, however, to be very critical at Mesket. Famine at last broke out, and the people were well-nigh distracted, as no assistance or relief could be expected from without. It was therefore decided to attempt a last sortie in order to die at least with glory. There was just sufficient powder left for one more attack, but there was no more lead for either guns or muskets. In this emergency the regent ordered iron nails and pebbles to be used in place of balls. The guns were loaded with all the old iron and brass that could be collected, and she opened her treasury to have bullets made out of her own silver dollars. Every nerve was strained, and the sally succeeded beyond all hope. The enemy was completely taken by surprise and fled in all directions, leaving more than half their men dead and wounded on the field. Mesket was saved, and, delivered out of her deep distress, the brave woman knelt down on the battlefield and thanked God in fervent prayer. 

 From that time her Government was a peaceful one, and she ruled so wisely that she was able to transfer to her nephew, my father, an empire so unimpaired as to place him in a position to extend the empire by the conquest of Zanzibar. It is to my great-aunt, therefore, that we owe, and not to an inconsiderable degree, the acquisition of this second empire. 

She, too, was an Eastern woman!

All through her book the Princess protests against the idea that Orientalwomen are degraded or oppressed, and in the following passage she pointsout how difficult it is for foreigners to get any real information on thesubject:

 The education of the children is left entirely to the mother, whether she be legitimate wife or purchased slave, and it constitutes her chief happiness. Some fashionable mothers in Europe shift this duty on to the nurse, and, by-and-by, on the governess, and are quite satisfied with looking up their children, or receiving their visits, once a day. In France the child is sent to be nursed in the country, and left to the care of strangers. An Arab mother, on the other hand, looks continually after her children. She watches and nurses them with the greatest affection, and never leaves them as long as they may stand in need of her motherly care, for which she is rewarded by the fondest filial love. 

 If foreigners had more frequent opportunities to observe the cheerfulness, the exuberance of spirits even, of Eastern women, they would soon and more easily be convinced of the untruth of all those stories afloat about the degraded, oppressed, and listless state of their life. It is impossible to gain a true insight into the actual domesticity in a few moments' visit; and the conversation carried on, on those formal occasions, hardly deserves that name; there is barely more than the exchange of a few commonplace remarks--and it is questionable if even these have been correctly interpreted. 

 Notwithstanding his innate hospitality, the Arab has the greatest possible objection to having his home pried into by those of another land and creed. Whenever, therefore, a European lady called on us, the enormous circumference of her hoops (which were the fashion then, and took up the entire width of the stairs) was the first thing to strike us dumb with wonder; after which, the very meagre conversation generally confined itself on both sides to the mysteries of different costumes; and the lady retired as wise as she was when she came, after having been sprinkled over with attar of roses, and being the richer for some parting presents. It is true she had entered a harem; she had seen the much-pitied Oriental ladies (though only through their veils); she had with her own eyes seen our dresses, our jewellery, the nimbleness with which we sat down on the floor--and that was all. She could not boast of having seen more than any other foreign lady who had called before her. She is conducted upstairs and downstairs, and is watched all the time. Rarely she sees more than the reception-room, and more rarely still can she guess or find out who the veiled lady is with whom she conversed. In short, she has had no opportunity whatsoever of learning anything of domestic life, or the position of Eastern women. 

No one who is interested in the social position of women in the Eastshould fail to read these pleasantly-written memoirs. The Princess isherself a woman of high culture, and the story of her life is asinstructive as history and as fascinating as fiction. 

* * * * *

Mrs. Oliphant's Makers of Venice is an admirable literary pendant to thesame writer's charming book on Florence, though there is a widedifference between the beautiful Tuscan city and the sea-city of theAdriatic. Florence, as Mrs. Oliphant points out, is a city full ofmemories of the great figures of the past. The traveller cannot passalong her streets without treading in the very traces of Dante, withoutstepping on soil made memorable by footprints never to be effaced. Thegreatness of the surroundings, the palaces, churches, and frowningmediaeval castles in the midst of the city, are all thrown into thebackground by the greatness, the individuality, the living power andvigour of the men who are their originators, and at the same time theirinspiring soul. But when we turn to Venice the effect is very different. We do not think of the makers of that marvellous city, but rather of whatthey made. The idealised image of Venice herself meets us everywhere. The mother is not overshadowed by the too great glory of any of her sons. In her records the city is everything--the republic, the worshipped idealof a community in which every man for the common glory seems to have beenwilling to sink his own. We know that Dante stood within the red wallsof the arsenal, and saw the galleys making and mending, and the pitchflaming up to heaven; Petrarch came to visit the great Mistress of theSea, taking refuge there, 'in this city, true home of the human race, 'from trouble, war and pestilence outside; and Byron, with his facileenthusiasms and fervent eloquence, made his home for a time in one of thestately, decaying palaces; but with these exceptions no great poet hasever associated himself with the life of Venice. She had architects, sculptors and painters, but no singer of her own. The arts through whichshe gave her message to the world were visible and imitative. Mrs. Oliphant, in her bright, picturesque style, tells the story of Venicepleasantly and well. Her account of the two Bellinis is especiallycharming; and the chapters on Titian and Tintoret are admirably written. She concludes her interesting and useful history with the followingwords, which are well worthy of quotation, though I must confess that the'alien modernisms' trouble me not a little:

 The critics of recent days have had much to say as to the deterioration of Venice in her new activity, and the introduction of alien modernisms, in the shape of steamboats and other new industrial agents, into her canals and lagoons. But in this adoption of every new development of power, Venice is only proving herself the most faithful representative of the vigorous republic of old. Whatever prejudice or angry love may say, we cannot doubt that the Michiels, the Dandolos, the Foscari, the great rulers who formed Venice, had steamboats existed in their day, serving their purpose better than their barges and peati, would have adopted them without hesitation, without a thought of what any critics might say. The wonderful new impulse which has made Italy a great power has justly put strength and life before those old traditions of beauty, which made her not only the 'woman country' of Europe, but a sort of Odalisque trading upon her charms, rather than the nursing mother of a noble and independent nation. That in her recoil from that somewhat degrading position, she may here and there have proved too regardless of the claims of antiquity, we need not attempt to deny; the new spring of life in her is too genuine and great to keep her entirely free from this evident danger. But it is strange that any one who loves Italy, and sincerely rejoices in her amazing resurrection, should fail to recognise how venial is this fault. 

Miss Mabel Robinson's last novel, The Plan of Campaign, is a verypowerful study of modern political life. As a concession to humanity, each of the politicians is made to fall in love, and the charm of theirvarious romances fully atones for the soundness of the author's theory ofrent. Miss Robinson dissects, describes, and discourses with keenscientific insight and minute observation. Her style, though somewhatlacking in grace, is, at its best, simple and strong. Richard Talbot andElinor Fetherston are admirably conceived and admirably drawn, and thewhole account of the murder of Lord Roeglass is most dramatic. 

A Year in Eden, by Harriet Waters Preston, is a chronicle of New Englandlife, and is full of the elaborate subtlety of the American school offiction. The Eden in question is the little village of Pierpont, and theEve of this provincial paradise is a beautiful girl called MonzaMiddleton, a fascinating, fearless creature, who brings ruin and miseryon all who love her. Miss Preston writes an admirable prose style, andthe minor characters in the book are wonderfully lifelike and true. 

The Englishwoman's Year-Book contains a really extraordinary amount ofuseful information on every subject connected with woman's work. In thecensus taken in 1831 (six years before the Queen ascended the Throne), nooccupation whatever was specified as appertaining to women, except thatof domestic service; but in the census of 1881, the number of occupationsmentioned as followed by women is upwards of three hundred and thirty. The most popular occupations seem to be those of domestic service, schoolteaching, and dressmaking; the lowest numbers on the list are those ofbankers, gardeners, and persons engaged in scientific pursuits. Besidesthese, the Year-Book makes mention of stockbroking and conveyancing asprofessions that women are beginning to adopt. The historical account ofthe literary work done by Englishwomen in this century, as given in theYear-Book, is curiously inadequate, and the list of women's magazines isnot complete, but in all other respects the publication seems a mostuseful and excellent one. 

* * * * *

Wordsworth, in one of his interesting letters to Lady Beaumont, says thatit is 'an awful truth that there neither is nor can be any genuineenjoyment of poetry among nineteen out of twenty of those persons wholive or wish to live in the broad light of the world--among those whoeither are, or are striving to make themselves, people of considerationin society, ' adding that the mission of poetry is 'to console theafflicted; to add sunshine to daylight by making the happy happier; toteach the young and the gracious of every age to see, to think, and feel, and, therefore, to become more actively and securely virtuous. ' I am, however, rather disposed to think that the age in which we live is onethat has a very genuine enjoyment of poetry, though we may no longeragree with Wordsworth's ideas on the subject of the poet's propermission; and it is interesting to note that this enjoyment manifestsitself by creation even more than by criticism. To realise thepopularity of the great poets, one should turn to the minor poets and seewhom they follow, what master they select, whose music they echo. Atpresent, there seems to be a reaction in favour of Lord Tennyson, if weare to judge by Rachel and Other Poems, which is a rather remarkablelittle volume in its way. The poem that gives its title to the book isfull of strong lines and good images; and, in spite of its Tennysonianechoes, there is something attractive in such verses as the following:

 Day by day along the Orient faintly glows the tender dawn, Day by day the pearly dewdrops tremble on the upland lawn:

 Day by day the star of morning pales before the coming ray, And the first faint streak of radiance brightens to the perfect day. 

 Day by day the rosebud gathers to itself, from earth and sky, Fragrant stores and ampler beauty, lovelier form and deeper dye:

 Day by day a richer crimson mantles in its glowing breast-- Every golden hour conferring some sweet grace that crowns the rest. 

 And thou canst not tell the moment when the day ascends her throne, When the morning star hath vanished, and the rose is fully blown. 

 So each day fulfils its purpose, calm, unresting, strong, and sure, Moving onward to completion, doth the work of God endure. 

 How unlike man's toil and hurry! how unlike the noise, the strife, All the pain of incompleteness, all the weariness of life!

 Ye look upward and take courage. He who leads the golden hours, Feeds the birds, and clothes the lily, made these human hearts of ours:

 Knows their need, and will supply it, manna falling day by day, Bread from heaven, and food of angels, all along the desert way. 

The Secretary of the International Technical College at Bedford hasissued a most interesting prospectus of the aims and objects of theInstitution. The College seems to be intended chiefly for ladies whohave completed their ordinary course of English studies, and it will bedivided into two departments, Educational and Industrial. In the latter, classes will be held for various decorative and technical arts, and forwood-carving, etching, and photography, as well as sick-nursing, dressmaking, cookery, physiology, poultry-rearing, and the cultivation offlowers. The curriculum certainly embraces a wonderful amount ofsubjects, and I have no doubt that the College will supply a real want. 

* * * * *

The Ladies' Employment Society has been so successful that it has movedto new premises in Park Street, Grosvenor Square, where there are somevery pretty and useful things for sale. The children's smocks are quitecharming, and seem very inexpensive. The subscription to the Society isone guinea a year, and a commission of five per cent. Is charged on eachthing sold. 

* * * * *

Miss May Morris, whose exquisite needle-work is well known, has justcompleted a pair of curtains for a house in Boston. They are amongst themost perfect specimens of modern embroidery that I have seen, and arefrom Miss Morris's own design. I am glad to hear that Miss Morris hasdetermined to give lessons in embroidery. She has a thorough knowledgeof the art, her sense of beauty is as rare as it is refined, and herpower of design is quite remarkable. 

Mrs. Jopling's life-classes for ladies have been such a success that asimilar class has been started in Chelsea by Mr. Clegg Wilkinson at theCarlyle Studios, King's Road. Mr. Wilkinson (who is a very brilliantyoung painter) is strongly of opinion that life should be studied fromlife itself, and not from that abstract presentation of life which wefind in Greek marbles--a position which I have always held very stronglymyself. 

(1) Memoirs of an Arabian Princess. By the Princess Emily Ruete of Omanand Zanzibar. (Ward and Downey. )

(2) Makers of Venice. By Mrs. Oliphant. (Macmillan and Co. )

(3) The Plan of Campaign. By Mabel Robinson. (Vizetelly and Co. )

(4) A Year in Eden. By Harriet Waters Preston. (Fisher Unwin. )

(5) The Englishwoman's Year-Book, 1888. (Hatchards. )

(6) Rachel and Other Poems. (Cornish Brothers. )

THE POETS' CORNER--VI

(Pall Mall Gazette, April 6, 1888. )

David Westren, by Mr. Alfred Hayes, is a long narrative poem inTennysonian blank verse, a sort of serious novel set to music. It issomewhat lacking in actuality, and the picturesque style in which it iswritten rather contributes to this effect, lending the story beauty butrobbing it of truth. Still, it is not without power, and cultured verseis certainly a pleasanter medium for story-telling than coarse and commonprose. The hero of the poem is a young clergyman of the muscularChristian school:

 A lover of good cheer; a bubbling source Of jest and tale; a monarch of the gun; A dreader tyrant of the darting trout Than that bright bird whose azure lightning threads The brooklet's bowery windings; the red fox Did well to seek the boulder-strewn hill-side, When Westren cheered her dappled foes; the otter Had cause to rue the dawn when Westren's form Loomed through the streaming bracken, to waylay Her late return from plunder, the rough pack Barking a jealous welcome round their friend. 

One day he meets on the river a lovely girl who is angling, and helps herto land

 A gallant fish, all flashing in the sun In silver mail inlaid with scarlet gems, His back thick-sprinkled as a leopard's hide With rich brown spots, and belly of bright gold. 

They naturally fall in love with each other and marry, and for many yearsDavid Westren leads a perfectly happy life. Suddenly calamity comes uponhim, his wife and children die and he finds himself alone and desolate. Then begins his struggle. Like Job, he cries out against the injusticeof things, and his own personal sorrow makes him realise the sorrow andmisery of the world. But the answer that satisfied Job does not satisfyhim. He finds no comfort in contemplating Leviathan:

 As if we lacked reminding of brute force, As if we never felt the clumsy hoof, As if the bulk of twenty million whales Were worth one pleading soul, or all the laws That rule the lifeless suns could soothe the sense Of outrage in a loving human heart! Sublime? majestic? Ay, but when our trust Totters, and faith is shattered to the base, Grand words will not uprear it. 

Mr. Hayes states the problem of life extremely well, but his solution issadly inadequate both from a psychological and from a dramatic point ofview. David Westren ultimately becomes a mild Unitarian, a sort ofpastoral Stopford Brooke with leanings towards Positivism, and we leavehim preaching platitudes to a village congregation. However, in spite ofthis commonplace conclusion there is a great deal in Mr. Hayes's poemthat is strong and fine, and he undoubtedly possesses a fair ear formusic and a remarkable faculty of poetical expression. Some of hisdescriptive touches of nature, such as

 In meeting woods, whereon a film of mist Slept like the bloom upon the purple grape, are very graceful and suggestive, and he will probably make his mark inliterature. 

There is much that is fascinating in Mr. Rennell Rodd's last volume, TheUnknown Madonna and Other Poems. Mr. Rodd looks at life with all thecharming optimism of a young man, though he is quite conscious of thefact that a stray note of melancholy, here and there, has an artistic aswell as a popular value; he has a keen sense of the pleasurableness ofcolour, and his verse is distinguished by a certain refinement and purityof outline; though not passionate he can play very prettily with thewords of passion, and his emotions are quite healthy and quite harmless. In Excelsis, the most ambitious poem in the book, is somewhat tooabstract and metaphysical, and such lines as

 Lift thee o'er thy 'here' and 'now, ' Look beyond thine 'I' and 'thou, '

are excessively tedious. But when Mr. Rodd leaves the problem of theUnconditioned to take care of itself, and makes no attempt to solve themysteries of the Ego and the non-Ego, he is very pleasant reading indeed. A Mazurka of Chopin is charming, in spite of the awkwardness of the fifthline, and so are the verses on Assisi, and those on San Servolo atVenice. These last have all the brilliancy of a clever pastel. Theprettiest thing in the whole volume is this little lyric on Spring:

 Such blue of sky, so palely fair, Such glow of earth, such lucid air! Such purple on the mountain lines, Such deep new verdure in the pines! The live light strikes the broken towers, The crocus bulbs burst into flowers, The sap strikes up the black vine stock, And the lizard wakes in the splintered rock, And the wheat's young green peeps through the sod, And the heart is touched with a thought of God; The very silence seems to sing, It must be Spring, it must be Spring!

We do not care for 'palely fair' in the first line, and the repetition ofthe word 'strikes' is not very felicitous, but the grace of movement anddelicacy of touch are pleasing. 

The Wind, by Mr. James Ross, is a rather gusty ode, written apparentlywithout any definite scheme of metre, and not very impressive as it lacksboth the strength of the blizzard and the sweetness of Zephyr. Here isthe opening:

 The roaming, tentless wind No rest can ever find-- From east, and west, and south, and north He is for ever driven forth! From the chill east Where fierce hyaenas seek their awful feast: From the warm west, By beams of glitt'ring summer blest. 

Nothing could be much worse than this, and if the line 'Where fiercehyaenas seek their awful feast' is intended to frighten us, it entirelymisses its effect. The ode is followed by some sonnets which aredestined, we fear, to be ludibria ventis. Immortality, even in thenineteenth century, is not granted to those who rhyme 'awe' and 'war'together. 

Mr. Isaac Sharp's Saul of Tarsus is an interesting, and, in somerespects, a fine poem. 

 Saul of Tarsus, silently, With a silent company, To Damascus' gates drew nigh. 

 * * * * *

 And his eyes, too, and his mien Were, as are the eagles, keen; All the man was aquiline--

are two strong, simple verses, and indeed the spirit of the whole poem isdignified and stately. The rest of the volume, however, isdisappointing. Ordinary theology has long since converted its gold intolead, and words and phrases that once touched the heart of the world havebecome wearisome and meaningless through repetition. If Theology desiresto move us, she must re-write her formulas. 

There is something very pleasant in coming across a poet who canapostrophise Byron as

 transcendent star That gems the firmament of poesy, and can speak of Longfellow as a 'mighty Titan. ' Reckless panegyrics ofthis kind show a kindly nature and a good heart, and Mr. Mackenzie'sHighland Daydreams could not possibly offend any one. It must beadmitted that they are rather old-fashioned, but this is usually the casewith natural spontaneous verse. It takes a great artist to be thoroughlymodern. Nature is always a little behind the age. 

The Story of the Cross, an attempt to versify the Gospel narratives, is astrange survival of the Tate and Brady school of poetry. Mr. Nash, whostyles himself 'a humble soldier in the army of Faith, ' expresses a hopethat his book may 'invigorate devotional feeling, especially among theyoung, to whom verse is perhaps more attractive than to their elders, 'but we should be sorry to think that people of any age could admire sucha paraphrase as the following:

 Foxes have holes, in which to slink for rest, The birds of air find shelter in the nest; But He, the Son of Man and Lord of all, Has no abiding place His own to call. 

It is a curious fact that the worst work is always done with the bestintentions, and that people are never so trivial as when they takethemselves very seriously. 

(1) David Westren. By Alfred Hayes, M. A. New Coll. , Oxon. (Birmingham:Cornish Brothers. )

(2) The Unknown Madonna and Other Poems. By Rennell Rodd. (DavidStott. )

(3) The Wind and Six Sonnets. By James Ross. (Bristol: J. W. Arrowsmith. )

(4) Saul of Tarsus. By Isaac Sharp. (Kegan Paul. )

(5) Highland Daydreams. By George Mackenzie. (Inverness: Office of theNorthern Chronicle. )

(6) The Story of the Cross. By Charles Nash. (Elliot Stock. )

M. CARO ON GEORGE SAND

(Pall Mall Gazette, April 14, 1888. )

The biography of a very great man from the pen of a very ladylikewriter--this is the best description we can give of M. Caro's Life ofGeorge Sand. The late Professor of the Sorbonne could chatter charminglyabout culture, and had all the fascinating insincerity of an accomplishedphrase-maker; being an extremely superior person he had a great contemptfor Democracy and its doings, but he was always popular with theDuchesses of the Faubourg, as there was nothing in history or inliterature that he could not explain away for their edification; havingnever done anything remarkable he was naturally elected a member of theAcademy, and he always remained loyal to the traditions of thatthoroughly respectable and thoroughly pretentious institution. In fact, he was just the sort of man who should never have attempted to write aLife of George Sand or to interpret George Sand's genius. He was toofeminine to appreciate the grandeur of that large womanly nature, toomuch of a dilettante to realise the masculine force of that strong andardent mind. He never gets at the secret of George Sand, and neverbrings us near to her wonderful personality. He looks on her simply as alitterateur, as a writer of pretty stories of country life and ofcharming, if somewhat exaggerated, romances. But George Sand was muchmore than this. Beautiful as are such books as Consuelo and Mauprat, Francois le Champi and La Mare au Diable, yet in none of them is sheadequately expressed, by none of them is she adequately revealed. As Mr. Matthew Arnold said, many years ago, 'We do not know George Sand unlesswe feel the spirit which goes through her work as a whole. ' With thisspirit, however, M. Caro has no sympathy. Madame Sand's doctrines areantediluvian, he tells us, her philosophy is quite dead and her ideas ofsocial regeneration are Utopian, incoherent and absurd. The best thingfor us to do is to forget these silly dreams and to read Teverino and LeSecretaire Intime. Poor M. Caro! This spirit, which he treats with suchairy flippancy, is the very leaven of modern life. It is remoulding theworld for us and fashioning our age anew. If it is antediluvian, it isso because the deluge is yet to come; if it is Utopian, then Utopia mustbe added to our geographies. To what curious straits M. Caro is drivenby his violent prejudices may be estimated by the fact that he tries toclass George Sand's novels with the old Chansons de geste, the stories ofadventure characteristic of primitive literatures; whereas in usingfiction as a vehicle of thought, and romance as a means of influencingthe social ideals of her age, George Sand was merely carrying out thetraditions of Voltaire and Rousseau, of Diderot and of Chateaubriand. Thenovel, says M. Caro, must be allied either to poetry or to science. Thatit has found in philosophy one of its strongest allies seems not to haveoccurred to him. In an English critic such a view might possibly beexcusable. Our greatest novelists, such as Fielding, Scott and Thackeraycared little for the philosophy of their age. But coming, as it does, from a French critic, the statement seems to show a strange want ofrecognition of one of the most important elements of French fiction. Nor, even in the narrow limits that he has imposed upon himself, can M. Carobe said to be a very fortunate or felicitous critic. To take merely oneinstance out of many, he says nothing of George Sand's delightfultreatment of art and the artist's life. And yet how exquisitely does sheanalyse each separate art and present it to us in its relation to life!In Consuelo she tells us of music; in Horace of authorship; in Le Chateaudes Desertes of acting; in Les Maitres Mosaistes of mosaic work; in LeChateau de Pictordu of portrait painting; and in La Daniella of thepainting of landscape. What Mr. Ruskin and Mr. Browning have done forEngland she did for France. She invented an art literature. It isunnecessary, however, to discuss any of M. Caro's minor failings, for thewhole effect of the book, so far as it attempts to portray for us thescope and character of George Sand's genius, is entirely spoiled by thefalse attitude assumed from the beginning, and though the dictum may seemto many harsh and exclusive, we cannot help feeling that an absoluteincapacity for appreciating the spirit of a great writer is noqualification for writing a treatise on the subject. 

As for Madame Sand's private life, which is so intimately connected withher art (for, like Goethe, she had to live her romances before she couldwrite them), M. Caro says hardly anything about it. He passes it overwith a modesty that almost makes one blush, and for fear of wounding thesusceptibilities of those grandes dames whose passions M. Paul Bourgetanalyses with such subtlety, he transforms her mother, who was a typicalFrench grisette, into 'a very amiable and spirituelle milliner'! It mustbe admitted that Joseph Surface himself could hardly show greater tactand delicacy, though we ourselves must plead guilty to preferring MadameSand's own description of her as an 'enfant du vieux pave de Paris. '

As regards the English version, which is by M. Gustave Masson, it may beup to the intellectual requirements of the Harrow schoolboys, but it willhardly satisfy those who consider that accuracy, lucidity and ease areessential to a good translation. Its carelessness is absolutelyastounding, and it is difficult to understand how a publisher like Mr. Routledge could have allowed such a piece of work to issue from hispress. 'Il descend avec le sourire d'un Machiavel' appears as 'hedescends into the smile of a Machiavelli'; George Sand's remark toFlaubert about literary style, 'tu la consideres comme un but, elle n'estqu'un effet' is translated 'you consider it an end, it is merely aneffort'; and such a simple phrase as 'ainsi le veut Festhe'tique duroman' is converted into 'so the aesthetes of the world would have it. ''Il faudra relacher mes Economies' is 'I will have to draw upon mysavings, ' not 'my economies will assuredly be relaxed'; 'cassuresresineuses' is not 'cleavages full of rosin, ' and 'Mme. Sand ne reussitque deux fois' is hardly 'Madame Sand was not twice successful. ''Querelles d'ecole' does not mean 'school disputations'; 'ceux qui sefont une sorte d'esthetique de l'indifference absolue' is not 'those ofwhich the aesthetics seem to be an absolute indifference'; 'chimere'should not be translated 'chimera, ' nor 'lettres ineditees' 'ineditedletters'; 'ridicules' means absurdities, not 'ridicules, ' and 'qui pourradefinir sa pensee?' is not 'who can clearly despise her thought?' M. Masson comes to grief over even such a simple sentence as 'elle s'etonnades fureurs qui accueillirent ce livre, ne comprenant pas que l'on haisseun auteur a travers son oeuvre, ' which he translates 'she was surprisedat the storm which greeted this book, _not understanding that the authoris hated through his work_. ' Then, passing over such phrases as'substituted by religion' instead of 'replaced by religion, ' and'vulgarisation' where 'popularisation' is meant, we come to that mostirritating form of translation, the literal word-for-word style. Thestream 'excites itself by the declivity which it obeys' is one of M. Masson's finest achievements in this genre, and it is an admirableinstance of the influence of schoolboys on their masters. However, itwould be tedious to make a complete 'catalogue of slips, ' so we willcontent ourselves by saying that M. Masson's translation is not merelyquite unworthy of himself, but is also quite undeserved by the public. Nowadays, the public has its feelings. 

George Sand. By the late Elme Marie Caro. Translated by Gustave Masson, B. A. , Assistant Master, Harrow School. 'Great French Writers' Series. (Routledge and Sons. )

THE POETS' CORNER--VII

(Pall Mall Gazette, October 24, 1888. )

Mr. Ian Hamilton's Ballad of Hadji is undeniably clever. Hadji is awonderful Arab horse that a reckless hunter rides to death in the pursuitof a wild boar, and the moral of the poem--for there is a moral--seems tobe that an absorbing passion is a very dangerous thing and blunts thehuman sympathies. In the course of the chase a little child is drowned, a Brahmin maiden murdered, and an aged peasant severely wounded, but thehunter cares for none of these things and will not hear of stopping torender any assistance. Some of the stanzas are very graceful, notablyone beginning

 Yes--like a bubble filled with smoke-- The curd-white moon upswimming broke The vacancy of space;

but such lines as the following, which occur in the description of thefight with the boar--

 I hung as close as keepsake locket On maiden breast--but from its socket He wrenched my bridle arm, are dreadful, and 'his brains festooned the thorn' is not a very happyway of telling the reader how the boar died. All through the volume wefind the same curious mixture of good and bad. To say that the sunkisses the earth 'with flame-moustachoed lip' is awkward and uncouth, andyet the poem in which the expression occurs has some pretty lines. Mr. Ian Hamilton should prune. Pruning, whether in the garden or in thestudy, is a most healthy and useful employment. The volume is nicelyprinted, but Mr. Strang's frontispiece is not a great success, and mostof the tail-pieces seem to have been designed without any reference tothe size of the page. 

Mr. Catty dedicates his book to the memory of Wordsworth, Shelley, Coleridge and Keats--a somewhat pompous signboard for such very ordinarywine--and an inscription in golden letters on the cover informs us thathis poems are 'addressed to the rising generation, ' whom, he tells uselsewhere, he is anxious to initiate into the great comprehensive truththat 'Virtue is no other than self-interest, deeply understood. ' Inorder to further this laudable aim he has written a very tedious blankverse poem which he calls The Secret of Content, but it certainly doesnot convey that secret to the reader. It is heavy, abstract and prosaic, and shows how intolerably dull a man can be who has the best intentionsand the most earnest beliefs. In the rest of the volume, where Mr. Cattydoes not take himself quite so seriously, there are some rather pleasingthings. The sonnet on Shelley's room at University College would beadmirable but for the unmusical character of the last line. 

 Green in the wizard arms Of the foam-bearded Atlantic, An isle of old enchantment, A melancholy isle, Enchanted and dreaming lies; And there, by Shannon's flowing In the moonlight, spectre-thin, The spectre Erin sits. 

 Wail no more, lonely one, mother of exile wail no more, Banshee of the world--no more! Thy sorrows are the world's, thou art no more alone; Thy wrongs the world's--

are the first and last stanzas of Mr. Todhunter's poem The Banshee. Tothrow away the natural grace of rhyme from a modern song is, as Mr. Swinburne once remarked, a wilful abdication of half the power and halfthe charm of verse, and we cannot say that Mr. Todhunter has given usmuch that consoles us for its loss. Part of his poem reads like atranslation of an old Bardic song, part of it like rough material forpoetry, and part of it like misshapen prose. It is an interestingspecimen of poetic writing but it is not a perfect work of art. It isamorphous and inchoate, and the same must be said of the two other poems, The Doom of the Children of Lir, and The Lamentation for the Sons ofTurann. Rhyme gives architecture as well as melody to song, and thoughthe lovely lute-builded walls of Thebes may have risen up to unrhymedchoral metres, we have had no modern Amphion to work such wonders for us. Such a verse as--

 Five were the chiefs who challenged By their deeds the Over-kingship, Bov Derg, the Daghda's son, Ilbrac of Assaroe, And Lir of the White Field in the plain of Emain Macha; And after them stood up Midhir the proud, who reigned Upon the hills of Bri, Of Bri the loved of Liath, Bri of the broken heart; And last was Angus Og; all these had many voices, But for Bov Derg were most, has, of course, an archaeological interest, but has no artistic value atall. Indeed, from the point of view of art, the few little poems at theend of the volume are worth all the ambitious pseudo-epics that Mr. Todhunter has tried to construct out of Celtic lore. A Bacchic Day ischarming, and the sonnet on the open-air performance of The FaithfullShepherdesse is most gracefully phrased and most happy in conception. 

Mr. Peacock is an American poet, and Professor Thomas Danleigh Supplee, A. M. , Ph. D. , F. R. S. , who has written a preface to his Poems of the Plainsand Songs of the Solitudes, tells us that he is entitled to be called theLaureate of the West. Though a staunch Republican, Mr. Peacock, according to the enthusiastic Professor, is not ashamed of his ancestorKing William of Holland, nor of his relatives Lord and Lady Peacock who, it seems, are natives of Scotland. He was brought up at Zanesville, Muskingum Co. , Ohio, where his father edited the Zanesville Aurora, andhe had an uncle who was 'a superior man' and edited the WheelingIntelligencer. His poems seem to be extremely popular, and have beenhighly praised, the Professor informs us, by Victor Hugo, the SaturdayReview and the Commercial Advertiser. The preface is the most amusingpart of the book, but the poems also are worth studying. The Maniac, TheBandit Chief, and The Outlaw can hardly be called light reading, but westrongly recommend the poem on Chicago:

 Chicago! great city of the West! All that wealth, all that power invest; Thou sprang like magic from the sand, As touched by the magician's wand. 

'Thou sprang' is slightly depressing, and the second line is ratherobscure, but we should not measure by too high a standard the untutoredutterances of artless nature. The opening lines of The Vendetta alsodeserve mention:

 When stars are glowing through day's gloaming glow, Reflecting from ocean's deep, mighty flow, At twilight, when no grim shadows of night, Like ghouls, have stalked in wake of the light. 

The first line is certainly a masterpiece, and, indeed, the whole volumeis full of gems of this kind. The Professor remarks in his elaboratepreface that Mr. Peacock 'frequently rises to the sublime, ' and the twopassages quoted above show how keenly critical is his taste in thesematters and how well the poet deserves his panegyric. 

Mr. Alexander Skene Smith's Holiday Recreations and Other Poems isheralded by a preface for which Principal Cairns is responsible. Principal Cairns claims that the life-story enshrined in Mr. Smith'spoems shows the wide diffusion of native fire and literary culture in allparts of Scotland, 'happily under higher auspices than those of merepoetic impulse. ' This is hardly a very felicitous way of introducing apoet, nor can we say that Mr. Smith's poems are distinguished by eitherfire or culture. He has a placid, pleasant way of writing, and, indeed, his verses cannot do any harm, though he really should not publish suchattempts at metrical versions of the Psalms as the following:

 A septuagenarian We frequently may see; An octogenarian If one should live to be, He is a burden to himself With weariness and woe And soon he dies, and off he flies, And leaveth all below. 

The 'literary culture' that produced these lines is, we fear, not of avery high order. 

'I study Poetry simply as a fine art by which I may exercise my intellectand elevate my taste, ' wrote the late Mr. George Morine many years ago toa friend, and the little posthumous volume that now lies before uscontains the record of his quiet literary life. One of the sonnets, thatentitled Sunset, appeared in Mr. Waddington's anthology, about ten yearsafter Mr. Morine's death, but this is the first time that his collectedpoems have been published. They are often distinguished by a grave andchastened beauty of style, and their solemn cadences have something ofthe 'grand manner' about them. The editor, Mr. Wilton, to whom Mr. Morine bequeathed his manuscripts, seems to have performed his task withgreat tact and judgment, and we hope that this little book will meet withthe recognition that it deserves. 

(1) The Ballad of Hadji and Other Poems. By Ian Hamilton. (Kegan Paul. )

(2) Poems in the Modern Spirit, with The Secret of Content. By CharlesCatty. (Walter Scott. )

(3) The Banshee and Other Poems. By John Todhunter. (Kegan Paul. )

(4) Poems of the Plain and Songs of the Solitudes. By Thomas BowerPeacock. (G. P. Putnam's Sons. )

(5) Holiday Recreations and Other Poems. By Alexander Skene Smith. (Chapman and Hall. )

(6) Poems. By George Morine. (Bell and Son. )

A FASCINATING BOOK

(Woman's World, November 1888. )

Mr. Alan Cole's carefully-edited translation of M. Lefebure's history ofEmbroidery and Lace is one of the most fascinating books that hasappeared on this delightful subject. M. Lefebure is one of theadministrators of the Musee des Arts Decoratifs at Paris, besides being alace manufacturer; and his work has not merely an important historicalvalue, but as a handbook of technical instruction it will be found of thegreatest service by all needle-women. Indeed, as the translator himselfpoints out, M. Lefebure's book suggests the question whether it is notrather by the needle and the bobbin, than by the brush, the graver or thechisel, that the influence of woman should assert itself in the arts. InEurope, at any rate, woman is sovereign in the domain of art-needle-work, and few men would care to dispute with her the right of using thosedelicate implements so intimately associated with the dexterity of hernimble and slender fingers; nor is there any reason why the productionsof embroidery should not, as Mr. Alan Cole suggests, be placed on thesame level with those of painting, engraving and sculpture, though theremust always be a great difference between those purely decorative artsthat glorify their own material and the more imaginative arts in whichthe material is, as it were, annihilated, and absorbed into the creationof a new form. In the beautifying of modern houses it certainly must beadmitted--indeed, it should be more generally recognised than it is--thatrich embroidery on hangings and curtains, portieres, couches and thelike, produces a far more decorative and far more artistic effect thancan be gained from our somewhat wearisome English practice of coveringthe walls with pictures and engravings; and the almost completedisappearance of embroidery from dress has robbed modern costume of oneof the chief elements of grace and fancy. 

That, however, a great improvement has taken place in English embroideryduring the last ten or fifteen years cannot, I think, be denied. It isshown, not merely in the work of individual artists, such as Mrs. Holiday, Miss May Morris and others, but also in the admirableproductions of the South Kensington School of Embroidery (thebest--indeed, the only really good--school that South Kensington hasproduced). It is pleasant to note, on turning over the leaves of M. Lefebure's book, that in this we are merely carrying out certain oldtraditions of Early English art. In the seventh century, St. Ethelreda, first abbess of the Monastery of Ely, made an offering to St. Cuthbert ofa sacred ornament she had worked with gold and precious stones, and thecope and maniple of St. Cuthbert, which are preserved at Durham, areconsidered to be specimens of opus Anglicanum. In the year 800, theBishop of Durham allotted the income of a farm of two hundred acres forlife to an embroideress named Eanswitha, in consideration of her keepingin repair the vestments of the clergy in his diocese. The battlestandard of King Alfred was embroidered by Danish princesses; and theAnglo-Saxon Gudric gave Alcuid a piece of land, on condition that sheinstructed his daughter in needle-work. Queen Mathilda bequeathed to theAbbey of the Holy Trinity at Caen a tunic embroidered at Winchester bythe wife of one Alderet; and when William presented himself to theEnglish nobles, after the Battle of Hastings, he wore a mantle coveredwith Anglo-Saxon embroideries, which is probably, M. Lefebure suggests, the same as that mentioned in the inventory of the Bayeux Cathedral, where, after the entry relating to the broderie a telle (representing theconquest of England), two mantles are described--one of King William, 'all of gold, powdered with crosses and blossoms of gold, and edged alongthe lower border with an orphrey of figures. ' The most splendid exampleof the opus Anglicanum now in existence is, of course, the Syon cope atthe South Kensington Museum; but English work seems to have beencelebrated all over the Continent. Pope Innocent IV. So admired thesplendid vestments worn by the English clergy in 1246, that he orderedsimilar articles from Cistercian monasteries in England. St. Dunstan, the artistic English monk, was known as a designer for embroideries; andthe stole of St. Thomas a Becket is still preserved in the cathedral atSens, and shows us the interlaced scroll-forms used by Anglo-Saxon MS. Illuminators. 

How far this modern artistic revival of rich and delicate embroidery willbear fruit depends, of course, almost entirely on the energy and studythat women are ready to devote to it; but I think that it must beadmitted that all our decorative arts in Europe at present have, atleast, this element of strength--that they are in immediate relationshipwith the decorative arts of Asia. Wherever we find in European history arevival of decorative art, it has, I fancy, nearly always been due toOriental influence and contact with Oriental nations. Our own keenlyintellectual art has more than once been ready to sacrifice realdecorative beauty either to imitative presentation or to ideal motive. Ithas taken upon itself the burden of expression, and has sought tointerpret the secrets of thought and passion. In its marvellous truth ofpresentation it has found its strength, and yet its weakness is therealso. It is never with impunity that an art seeks to mirror life. IfTruth has her revenge upon those who do not follow her, she is oftenpitiless to her worshippers. In Byzantium the two arts met--Greek art, with its intellectual sense of form, and its quick sympathy withhumanity; Oriental art, with its gorgeous materialism, its frankrejection of imitation, its wonderful secrets of craft and colour, itssplendid textures, its rare metals and jewels, its marvellous andpriceless traditions. They had, indeed, met before, but in Byzantiumthey were married; and the sacred tree of the Persians, the palm ofZoroaster, was embroidered on the hem of the garments of the Westernworld. Even the Iconoclasts, the Philistines of theological history, who, in one of those strange outbursts of rage against Beauty that seemto occur only amongst European nations, rose up against the wonder andmagnificence of the new art, served merely to distribute its secrets morewidely; and in the Liber Pontificalis, written in 687 by Athanasius, thelibrarian, we read of an influx into Rome of gorgeous embroideries, thework of men who had arrived from Constantinople and from Greece. Thetriumph of the Mussulman gave the decorative art of Europe a newdeparture--that very principle of their religion that forbade the actualrepresentation of any object in nature being of the greatest artisticservice to them, though it was not, of course, strictly carried out. TheSaracens introduced into Sicily the art of weaving silken and goldenfabrics; and from Sicily the manufacture of fine stuffs spread to theNorth of Italy, and became localised in Genoa, Florence, Venice, andother towns. A still greater art-movement took place in Spain under theMoors and Saracens, who brought over workmen from Persia to makebeautiful things for them. M. Lefebure tells us of Persian embroiderypenetrating as far as Andalusia; and Almeria, like Palermo, had its Hoteldes Tiraz, which rivalled the Hotel des Tiraz at Bagdad, tiraz being thegeneric name for ornamental tissues and costumes made with them. Spangles(those pretty little discs of gold, silver, or polished steel, used incertain embroidery for dainty glinting effects) were a Saracenicinvention; and Arabic letters often took the place of letters in theRoman characters for use in inscriptions upon embroidered robes andMiddle Age tapestries, their decorative value being so much greater. Thebook of crafts by Etienne Boileau, provost of the merchants in 1258-1268, contains a curious enumeration of the different craft-guilds of Paris, among which we find 'the tapiciers, or makers of the tapis sarrasinois(or Saracen cloths), who say that their craft is for the service only ofchurches, or great men like kings and counts'; and, indeed, even in ourown day, nearly all our words descriptive of decorative textures anddecorative methods point to an Oriental origin. What the inroads of theMohammedans did for Sicily and Spain, the return of the Crusaders did forthe other countries of Europe. The nobles who left for Palestine clad inarmour, came back in the rich stuffs of the East; and their costumes, pouches (aumonieres sarra-sinoises), and caparisons excited theadmiration of the needle-workers of the West. Matthew Paris says that atthe sacking of Antioch, in 1098, gold, silver and priceless costumes wereso equally distributed among the Crusaders, that many who the nightbefore were famishing and imploring relief, suddenly found themselvesoverwhelmed with wealth; and Robert de Clair tells us of the wonderfulfetes that followed the capture of Constantinople. The thirteenthcentury, as M. Lefebure points out, was conspicuous for an increaseddemand in the West for embroidery. Many Crusaders made offerings tochurches of plunder from Palestine; and St. Louis, on his return from thefirst Crusade, offered thanks at St. Denis to God for mercies bestowed onhim during his six years' absence and travel, and presented some richly-embroidered stuffs to be used on great occasions as coverings to thereliquaries containing the relics of holy martyrs. European embroidery, having thus become possessed of new materials and wonderful methods, developed on its own intellectual and imitative lines, inclining, as itwent on, to the purely pictorial, and seeking to rival painting, and toproduce landscapes and figure-subjects with elaborate perspective andsubtle aerial effects. A fresh Oriental influence, however, came throughthe Dutch and the Portuguese, and the famous Compagnie des Grandes Indes;and M. Lefebure gives an illustration of a door-hanging now in the ClunyMuseum, where we find the French fleurs-de-lys intermixed with Indianornament. The hangings of Madame de Maintenon's room at Fontainebleau, which were embroidered at St. Cyr, represent Chinese scenery upon ajonquil-yellow ground. 

Clothes were sent out ready cut to the East to be embroidered, and manyof the delightful coats of the period of Louis XV. And Louis XVI. Owetheir dainty decoration to the needles of Chinese artists. In our ownday the influence of the East is strongly marked. Persia has sent us hercarpets for patterns, and Cashmere her lovely shawls, and India herdainty muslins finely worked with gold thread palmates, and stitched overwith iridescent beetles' wings. We are beginning now to dye by Orientalmethods, and the silk robes of China and Japan have taught us new wondersof colour-combination, and new subtleties of delicate design. Whether wehave yet learned to make a wise use of what we have acquired is lesscertain. If books produce an effect, this book of M. Lefebure shouldcertainly make us study with still deeper interest the whole question ofembroidery, and by those who already work with their needles it will befound full of most fertile suggestion and most admirable advice. 

Even to read of the marvellous works of embroidery that were fashioned inbygone ages is pleasant. Time has kept a few fragments of Greekembroidery of the fourth century B. C. For us. One is figured in M. Lefebure's book--a chain-stitch embroidery of yellow flax upon a mulberry-coloured worsted material, with graceful spirals and palmetto-patterns:and another, a tapestried cloth powdered with ducks, was reproduced inthe Woman's World some months ago for an article by Mr. Alan Cole. {334a}Now and then we find in the tomb of some dead Egyptian a piece ofdelicate work. In the treasury at Ratisbon is preserved a specimen ofByzantine embroidery on which the Emperor Constantine is depicted ridingon a white palfrey, and receiving homage from the East and West. Metzhas a red silk cope wrought with great eagles, the gift of Charlemagne, and Bayeux the needle-wrought epic of Queen Matilda. But where is thegreat crocus-coloured robe, wrought for Athena, on which the gods foughtagainst the giants? Where is the huge velarium that Nero stretchedacross the Colosseum at Rome, on which was represented the starry sky, and Apollo driving a chariot drawn by steeds? How one would like to seethe curious table-napkins wrought for Heliogabalus, on which weredisplayed all the dainties and viands that could be wanted for a feast;or the mortuary-cloth of King Chilperic, with its three hundred goldenbees; or the fantastic robes that excited the indignation of the Bishopof Pontus, and were embroidered with 'lions, panthers, bears, dogs, forests, rocks, hunters--all, in fact, that painters can copy fromnature. ' Charles of Orleans had a coat, on the sleeves of which wereembroidered the verses of a song beginning 'Madame, je suis tout joyeux, 'the musical accompaniment of the words being wrought in gold thread, andeach note, of square shape in those days, formed with four pearls. {334b}The room prepared in the palace at Rheims for the use of Queen Joan ofBurgundy was decorated with 'thirteen hundred and twenty-one papegauts(parrots) made in broidery and blazoned with the King's arms, and fivehundred and sixty-one butterflies, whose wings were similarly ornamentedwith the Queen's arms--the whole worked in fine gold. ' Catherine deMedicis had a mourning-bed made for her 'of black velvet embroidered withpearls and powdered with crescents and suns. ' Its curtains were ofdamask, 'with leafy wreaths and garlands figured upon a gold and silverground, and fringed along the edges with broideries of pearls, ' and itstood in a room hung with rows of the Queen's devices in cut black velveton cloth of silver. Louis XIV. Had gold-embroidered caryatides fifteenfeet high in his apartment. The state-bed of Sobieski, King of Poland, was made of Smyrna gold brocade embroidered in turquoises and pearls, with verses from the Koran; its supports were of silver-gilt, beautifullychased and profusely set with enamelled and jewelled medallions. He hadtaken it from the Turkish camp before Vienna, and the standard of Mahomethad stood under it. The Duchess de la Ferte wore a dress ofreddish-brown velvet, the skirt of which, adjusted in graceful folds, washeld up by big butterflies made of Dresden china; the front was a tablierof cloth of silver, upon which was embroidered an orchestra of musiciansarranged in a pyramidal group, consisting of a series of six ranks ofperformers, with beautiful instruments wrought in raised needle-work. 'Into the night go one and all, ' as Mr. Henley sings in his charmingBallade of Dead Actors. 

Many of the facts related by M. Lefebure about the embroiderers' guildsare also extremely interesting. Etienne Boileau, in his book of crafts, to which I have already alluded, tells us that a member of the guild wasprohibited from using gold of less value than 'eight sous (about 6s. ) theskein; he was bound to use the best silk, and never to mix thread withsilk, because that made the work false and bad. ' The test or trial pieceprescribed for a worker who was the son of a master-embroiderer was 'asingle figure, a sixth of the natural size, to be shaded in gold'; whilstone not the son of a master was required to produce 'a complete incidentwith many figures. ' The book of crafts also mentions 'cutters-out andstencillers and illuminators' amongst those employed in the industry ofembroidery. In 1551 the Parisian Corporation of Embroiderers issued anotice that 'for the future, the colouring in representations of nudefigures and faces should be done in three or four gradations of carnation-dyed silk, and not, as formerly, in white silks. ' During the fifteenthcentury every household of any position retained the services of anembroiderer by the year. The preparation of colours also, whether forpainting or for dyeing threads and textile fabrics, was a matter which, M. Lefebure points out, received close attention from the artists of theMiddle Ages. Many undertook long journeys to obtain the more famousrecipes, which they filed, subsequently adding to and correcting them asexperience dictated. Nor were great artists above making and supplyingdesigns for embroidery. Raphael made designs for Francis I. , and Boucherfor Louis XV. ; and in the Ambras collection at Vienna is a superb set ofsacerdotal robes from designs by the brothers Van Eyck and their pupils. Early in the sixteenth century books of embroidery designs were produced, and their success was so great that in a few years French, German, Italian, Flemish, and English publishers spread broadcast books of designmade by their best engravers. In the same century, in order to give thedesigners opportunity of studying directly from nature, Jean Robin openeda garden with conservatories, in which he cultivated strange varieties ofplants then but little known in our latitudes. The rich brocades andbrocadelles of the time are characterised by the introduction of largeflowery patterns, with pomegranates and other fruits with fine foliage. 

The second part of M. Lefebure's book is devoted to the history of lace, and though some may not find it quite as interesting as the earlierportion it will more than repay perusal; and those who still work in thisdelicate and fanciful art will find many valuable suggestions in it, aswell as a large number of exceedingly beautiful designs. Compared toembroidery, lace seems comparatively modern. M. Lefebure and Mr. AlanCole tell us that there is no reliable or documentary evidence to provethe existence of lace before the fifteenth century. Of course in theEast, light tissues, such as gauzes, muslins, and nets, were made at veryearly times, and were used as veils and scarfs after the manner ofsubsequent laces, and women enriched them with some sort of embroidery, or varied the openness of them by here and there drawing out threads. Thethreads of fringes seem also to have been plaited and knotted together, and the borders of one of the many fashions of Roman toga were of openreticulated weaving. The Egyptian Museum at the Louvre has a curiousnetwork embellished with glass beads; and the monk Reginald, who tookpart in opening the tomb of St. Cuthbert at Durham in the twelfthcentury, writes that the Saint's shroud had a fringe of linen threads aninch long, surmounted by a border, 'worked upon the threads, ' withrepresentations of birds and pairs of beasts, there being between eachsuch pair a branching tree, a survival of the palm of Zoroaster, to whichI have before alluded. Our authors, however, do not in these examplesrecognise lace, the production of which involves more refined andartistic methods, and postulates a combination of skill and variedexecution carried to a higher degree of perfection. Lace, as we know it, seems to have had its origin in the habit of embroidering linen. Whiteembroidery on linen has, M. Lefebure remarks, a cold and monotonousaspect; that with coloured threads is brighter and gayer in effect, butis apt to fade in frequent washing; but white embroidery relieved by openspaces in, or shapes cut from, the linen ground, is possessed of anentirely new charm; and from a sense of this the birth may be traced ofan art in the result of which happy contrasts are effected betweenornamental details of close texture and others of open-work. 

Soon, also, was suggested the idea that, instead of laboriouslywithdrawing threads from stout linen, it would be more convenient tointroduce a needle-made pattern into an open network ground, which wascalled a lacis. Of this kind of embroidery many specimens are extant. The Cluny Museum possesses a linen cap said to have belonged to CharlesV. ; and an alb of linen drawn-thread work, supposed to have been made byAnne of Bohemia (1527), is preserved in the cathedral at Prague. Catherine de Medicis had a bed draped with squares of reseuil, or lacis, and it is recorded that 'the girls and servants of her household consumedmuch time in making squares of reseuil. ' The interesting pattern-booksfor open-ground embroidery, of which the first was published in 1527 byPierre Quinty, of Cologne, supply us with the means of tracing the stagesin the transition from white thread embroidery to needle-point lace. Wemeet in them with a style of needle-work which differs from embroidery innot being wrought upon a stuff foundation. It is, in fact, true lace, done, as it were, 'in the air, ' both ground and pattern being entirelyproduced by the lace-maker. 

The elaborate use of lace in costume was, of course, largely stimulatedby the fashion of wearing ruffs, and their companion cuffs or sleeves. Catherine de Medicis induced one Frederic Vinciolo to come from Italy andmake ruffs and gadrooned collars, the fashion of which she started inFrance; and Henry III. Was so punctilious over his ruffs that he wouldiron and goffer his cuffs and collars himself rather than see theirpleats limp and out of shape. The pattern-books also gave a greatimpulse to the art. M. Lefebure mentions German books with patterns ofeagles, heraldic emblems, hunting scenes, and plants and leaves belongingto Northern vegetation; and Italian books, in which the motifs consist ofoleander blossoms, and elegant wreaths and scrolls, landscapes withmythological scenes, and hunting episodes, less realistic than theNorthern ones, in which appear fauns, and nymphs or amorini shootingarrows. With regard to these patterns, M. Lefebure notices a curiousfact. The oldest painting in which lace is depicted is that of a lady, by Carpaccio, who died about 1523. The cuffs of the lady are edged witha narrow lace, the pattern of which reappears in Vecellio's Corona, abook not published until 1591. This particular pattern was, therefore, in use at least eighty years before it got into circulation with otherpublished patterns. 

It was not, however, till the seventeenth century that lace acquired areally independent character and individuality, and M. Duplessis statesthat the production of the more noteworthy of early laces owes more tothe influence of men than to that of women. The reign of Louis XIV. Witnessed the production of the most stately needle-point laces, thetransformation of Venetian point, and the growth of Points d'Alencon, d'Argentan, de Bruxelles and d'Angleterre. 

The king, aided by Colbert, determined to make France the centre, ifpossible, for lace manufacture, sending for this purpose both to Veniceand to Flanders for workers. The studio of the Gobelins supplieddesigns. The dandies had their huge rabatos or bands falling frombeneath the chin over the breast, and great prelates, like Bossuet andFenelon, wore their wonderful albs and rochets. It is related of acollar made at Venice for Louis XIV. That the lace-workers, being unableto find sufficiently fine horse-hair, employed some of their own hairsinstead, in order to secure that marvellous delicacy of work which theyaimed at producing. 

In the eighteenth century, Venice, finding that laces of lighter texturewere sought after, set herself to make rose-point; and at the Court ofLouis XV. The choice of lace was regulated by still more elaborateetiquette. The Revolution, however, ruined many of the manufactures. Alencon survived, and Napoleon encouraged it, and endeavoured to renewthe old rules about the necessity of wearing point-lace at Courtreceptions. A wonderful piece of lace, powdered over with devices ofbees, and costing 40, 000 francs, was ordered. It was begun for theEmpress Josephine, but in the course of its making her escutcheons werereplaced by those of Marie Louise. 

M. Lefebure concludes his interesting history by stating very clearly hisattitude towards machine-made lace. 'It would be an obvious loss toart, ' he says, 'should the making of lace by hand become extinct, formachinery, as skilfully devised as possible, cannot do what the handdoes. ' It can give us 'the results of processes, not the creations ofartistic handicraft. ' Art is absent 'where formal calculation pretendsto supersede emotion'; it is absent 'where no trace can be detected ofintelligence guiding handicraft, whose hesitancies even possess peculiarcharm . . . Cheapness is never commendable in respect of things which arenot absolute necessities; it lowers artistic standard. ' These areadmirable remarks, and with them we take leave of this fascinating book, with its delightful illustrations, its charming anecdotes, its excellentadvice. Mr. Alan Cole deserves the thanks of all who are interested inart for bringing this book before the public in so attractive and soinexpensive a form. 

Embroidery and Lace: Their Manufacture and History from the RemotestAntiquity to the Present Day. Translated and enlarged by Alan S. Colefrom the French of Ernest Lefebure. (Grevel and Co. )

THE POETS' CORNER--VIII

(Pall Mall Gazette, November 16, 1888. )

A few years ago some of our minor poets tried to set Science to music, towrite sonnets on the survival of the fittest and odes to NaturalSelection. Socialism, and the sympathy with those who are unfit, seem, if we may judge from Miss Nesbit's remarkable volume, to be the new themeof song, the fresh subject-matter for poetry. The change has someadvantages. Scientific laws are at once too abstract and too clearlydefined, and even the visible arts have not yet been able to translateinto any symbols of beauty the discoveries of modern science. At theArts and Crafts Exhibition we find the cosmogony of Moses, not thecosmogony of Darwin. To Mr. Burne-Jones Man is still a fallen angel, nota greater ape. Poverty and misery, upon the other hand, are terriblyconcrete things. We find their incarnation everywhere and, as we arediscussing a matter of art, we have no hesitation in saying that they arenot devoid of picturesqueness. The etcher or the painter finds in them'a subject made to his hand, ' and the poet has admirable opportunities ofdrawing weird and dramatic contrasts between the purple of the rich andthe rags of the poor. From Miss Nesbit's book comes not merely the voiceof sympathy but also the cry of revolution:

 This is our vengeance day. Our masters made fat with our fasting Shall fall before us like corn when the sickle for harvest is strong: Old wrongs shall give might to our arm, remembrance of wrongs shall make lasting The graves we will dig for our tyrants we bore with too much and too long. 

The poem from which we take this stanza is remarkably vigorous, and theonly consolation that we can offer to the timid and the Tories is that aslong as so much strength is employed in blowing the trumpet, the sword, so far as Miss Nesbit is concerned, will probably remain sheathed. Personally, and looking at the matter from a purely artistic point ofview, we prefer Miss Nesbit's gentler moments. Her eye for Nature ispeculiarly keen. She has always an exquisite sense of colour andsometimes a most delicate ear for music. Many of her poems, such as TheMoat House, Absolution, and The Singing of the Magnificat are true worksof art, and Vies Manquees is a little gem of song, with its daintydancing measure, its delicate and wilful fancy and the sharp poignantnote of passion that suddenly strikes across it, marring its lightlaughter and lending its beauty a terrible and tragic meaning. 

From the sonnets we take this at random:

 Not Spring--too lavish of her bud and leaf-- But Autumn with sad eyes and brows austere, When fields are bare, and woods are brown and sere, And leaden skies weep their enchantless grief. Spring is so much too bright, since Spring is brief, And in our hearts is Autumn all the year, Least sad when the wide pastures are most drear And fields grieve most--robbed of the last gold sheaf. 

These too, the opening stanzas of The Last Envoy, are charming:

 The Wind, that through the silent woodland blows O'er rippling corn and dreaming pastures goes Straight to the garden where the heart of Spring Faints in the heart of Summer's earliest rose. 

 Dimpling the meadow's grassy green and grey, By furze that yellows all the common way, Gathering the gladness of the common broom, And too persistent fragrance of the may--

 Gathering whatever is of sweet and dear, The wandering wind has passed away from here, Has passed to where within your garden waits The concentrated sweetness of the year. 

But Miss Nesbit is not to be judged by mere extracts. Her work is toorich and too full for that. 

Mr. Foster is an American poet who has read Hawthorne, which is wise ofhim, and imitated Longfellow, which is not quite so commendable. HisRebecca the Witch is a story of old Salem, written in the metre ofHiawatha, with a few rhymes thrown in, and conceived in the spirit of theauthor of The Scarlet Letter. The combination is not very satisfactory, but the poem, as a piece of fiction, has many elements of interest. Mr. Foster seems to be quite popular in America. The Chicago Times finds hisfancies 'very playful and sunny, ' and the Indianapolis Journal speaks ofhis 'tender and appreciative style. ' He is certainly a cleverstory-teller, and The Noah's Ark (which 'somehow had escaped thesheriff's hand') is bright and amusing, and its pathos, like the pathosof a melodrama, is a purely picturesque element not intended to be takentoo seriously. We cannot, however, recommend the definitely comic poems. They are very depressing. 

Mr. John Renton Denning dedicates his book to the Duke of Connaught, whois Colonel-in-Chief of the Rifle Brigade, in which regiment Mr. Denningwas once himself a private soldier. His poems show an ardent love ofKeats and a profligate luxuriance of adjectives:

 And I will build a bower for thee, sweet, A verdurous shelter from the noonday heat, Thick rustling ivy, broad and green, and shining, With honeysuckle creeping up and twining Its nectared sweetness round thee; violets And daisies with their fringed coronets And the white bells of tiny valley lilies, And golden-leaved narcissi--daffodillies Shall grow around thy dwelling--luscious fare Of fruit on which the sun has laughed;

this is the immature manner of Endymion with a vengeance and is not to beencouraged. Still, Mr. Denning is not always so anxious to reproduce thefaults of his master. Sometimes he writes with wonderful grace andcharm. Sylvia, for instance, is an exceedingly pretty poem, and TheExile has many powerful and picturesque lines. Mr. Denning should make aselection of his poems and publish them in better type and on betterpaper. The 'get-up' of his volume, to use the slang phrase of our youngpoets, is very bad indeed, and reflects no credit on the press of theEducation Society of Bombay. 

The best poem in Mr. Joseph McKim's little book is, undoubtedly, Williamthe Silent. It is written in the spirited Macaulay style:

 Awake, awake, ye burghers brave! shout, shout for joy and sing! With thirty thousand at his back comes forth your hero King. Now shake for ever from your necks the servile yoke of Spain, And raise your arms and end for aye false Alva's cruel reign. Ho! Maestricht, Liege, Brussels fair! pour forth your warriors brave, And join your hands with him who comes your hearths and homes to save. 

Some people like this style. 

Mrs. Horace Dobell, who has arrived at her seventeenth volume of poetry, seems very angry with everybody, and writes poems to A Human Toad withlurid and mysterious footnotes such as--'Yet some one, _not_ a friend of--- _did_! on a certain occasion of a glib utterance of calumnies, by ---!at Hampstead. ' Here indeed is a Soul's Tragedy. 

'In many cases I have deliberately employed alliteration, believing thatthe music of a line is intensified thereby, ' says Mr. Kelly in thepreface to his poems, and there is certainly no reason why Mr. Kellyshould not employ this 'artful aid. ' Alliteration is one of the manysecrets of English poetry, and as long as it is kept a secret it isadmirable. Mr. Kelly, it must be admitted, uses it with becoming modestyand reserve and never suffers it to trammel the white feet of his brightand buoyant muse. His volume is, in many ways, extremely interesting. Most minor poets are at their best in sonnets, but with him it is not so. His sonnets are too narrative, too diffuse, and too lyrical. They lackconcentration, and concentration is the very essence of a sonnet. Hislonger poems, on the other hand, have many good qualities. We do notcare for Psychossolles, which is elaborately commonplace, but The Flightof Calliope has many charming passages. It is a pity that Mr. Kelly hasincluded the poems written before the age of nineteen. Youth is rarelyoriginal. 

Andiatorocte is the title of a volume of poems by the Rev. ClarenceWalworth, of Albany, N. Y. It is a word borrowed from the Indians, andshould, we think, be returned to them as soon as possible. The mostcurious poem of the book is called Scenes at the Holy Home:

 Jesus and Joseph at work! Hurra! Sight never to see again, A prentice Deity plies the saw, While the Master ploughs with the plane. 

Poems of this kind were popular in the Middle Ages when the cathedrals ofevery Christian country served as its theatres. They are anachronismsnow, and it is odd that they should come to us from the United States. Inmatters of this kind we should have some protection. 

(1) Lays and Legends. By E. Nesbit. (Longmans, Green and Co. )

(2) Rebecca the Witch and Other Tales. By David Skaats Foster. (G. P. Putnam's Sons. )

(3) Poems and Songs. By John Renton Denning. (Bombay: EducationSociety's Press. )

(4) Poems. By Joseph McKim. (Kegan Paul. )

(5) In the Watches of the Night. Poems in eighteen volumes. By Mrs. Horace Dobell. Vol. Xvii. (Remington and Co. )

(6) Poems. By James Kelly. (Glasgow: Reid and Coghill. )

(7) Andiatorocte. By the Rev. Clarence A. Walworth. (G. P. Putnam'sSons. )

A NOTE ON SOME MODERN POETS

(Woman's World, December 1888. )

'If I were king, ' says Mr. Henley, in one of his most modest rondeaus, 'Art should aspire, yet ugliness be dear; Beauty, the shaft, should speed with wit for feather; And love, sweet love, should never fall to sere, If I were king. '

And these lines contain, if not the best criticism of his own work, certainly a very complete statement of his aim and motive as a poet. Hislittle Book of Verses reveals to us an artist who is seeking to find newmethods of expression and has not merely a delicate sense of beauty and abrilliant, fantastic wit, but a real passion also for what is horrible, ugly, or grotesque. No doubt, everything that is worthy of existence isworthy also of art--at least, one would like to think so--but while echoor mirror can repeat for us a beautiful thing, to render artistically athing that is ugly requires the most exquisite alchemy of form, the mostsubtle magic of transformation. To me there is more of the cry ofMarsyas than of the singing of Apollo in the earlier poems of Mr. Henley's volume, In Hospital: Rhymes and Rhythms, as he calls them. Butit is impossible to deny their power. Some of them are like bright, vivid pastels; others like charcoal drawings, with dull blacks and murkywhites; others like etchings with deeply-bitten lines, and abruptcontrasts, and clever colour-suggestions. In fact, they are likeanything and everything, except perfected poems--that they certainly arenot. They are still in the twilight. They are preludes, experiments, inspired jottings in a note-book, and should be heralded by a design of'Genius Making Sketches. ' Rhyme gives architecture as well as melody toverse; it gives that delightful sense of limitation which in all the artsis so pleasurable, and is, indeed, one of the secrets of perfection; itwill whisper, as a French critic has said, 'things unexpected andcharming, things with strange and remote relations to each other, ' andbind them together in indissoluble bonds of beauty; and in his constantrejection of rhyme, Mr. Henley seems to me to have abdicated half hispower. He is a roi en exil who has thrown away some of the strings ofhis lute; a poet who has forgotten the fairest part of his kingdom. 

However, all work criticises itself. Here is one of Mr. Henley'sinspired jottings. According to the temperament of the reader, it willserve either as a model or as the reverse:

 As with varnish red and glistening Dripped his hair; his feet were rigid; Raised, he settled stiffly sideways: You could see the hurts were spinal. 

 He had fallen from an engine, And been dragged along the metals. It was hopeless, and they knew it; So they covered him, and left him. 

 As he lay, by fits half sentient, Inarticulately moaning, With his stockinged feet protruded Sharp and awkward from the blankets, To his bed there came a woman, Stood and looked and sighed a little, And departed without speaking, As himself a few hours after. 

 I was told she was his sweetheart. They were on the eve of marriage. She was quiet as a statue, But her lip was gray and writhen. 

In this poem, the rhythm and the music, such as it is, areobvious--perhaps a little too obvious. In the following I see nothingbut ingeniously printed prose. It is a description--and a very accurateone--of a scene in a hospital ward. The medical students are supposed tobe crowding round the doctor. What I quote is only a fragment, but thepoem itself is a fragment:

 So shows the ring Seen, from behind, round a conjuror Doing his pitch in the street. High shoulders, low shoulders, broad shoulders, narrow ones, Round, square, and angular, serry and shove; While from within a voice, Gravely and weightily fluent, Sounds; and then ceases; and suddenly (Look at the stress of the shoulders!) Out of a quiver of silence, Over the hiss of the spray, Comes a low cry, and the sound Of breath quick intaken through teeth Clenched in resolve. And the master Breaks from the crowd, and goes, Wiping his hands, To the next bed, with his pupils Flocking and whispering behind him. 

 Now one can see. Case Number One Sits (rather pale) with his bedclothes Stripped up, and showing his foot (Alas, for God's image!) Swaddled in wet white lint Brilliantly hideous with red. 

Theophile Gautier once said that Flaubert's style was meant to be read, and his own style to be looked at. Mr. Henley's unrhymed rhythms formvery dainty designs, from a typographical point of view. From the pointof view of literature, they are a series of vivid, concentratedimpressions, with a keen grip of fact, a terrible actuality, and analmost masterly power of picturesque presentation. But the poeticform--what of that?

Well, let us pass to the later poems, to the rondels and rondeaus, thesonnets and quatorzains, the echoes and the ballades. How brilliant andfanciful this is! The Toyokuni colour-print that suggested it could notbe more delightful. It seems to have kept all the wilful fantastic charmof the original:

 Was I a Samurai renowned, Two-sworded, fierce, immense of bow? A histrion angular and profound? A priest? a porter?--Child, although I have forgotten clean, I know That in the shade of Fujisan, What time the cherry-orchards blow, I loved you once in old Japan. 

 As here you loiter, flowing-gowned And hugely sashed, with pins a-row Your quaint head as with flamelets crowned, Demure, inviting--even so, When merry maids in Miyako To feel the sweet o' the year began, And green gardens to overflow, I loved you once in old Japan. 

 Clear shine the hills; the rice-fields round Two cranes are circling; sleepy and slow, A blue canal the lake's blue bound Breaks at the bamboo bridge; and lo! Touched with the sundown's spirit and glow, I see you turn, with flirted fan, Against the plum-tree's bloomy snow . . . I loved you once in old Japan!

 ENVOY. 

 Dear, 'twas a dozen lives ago; But that I was a lucky man The Toyokuni here will show: I loved you--once--in old Japan!

This rondel, too--how light it is, and graceful!--

 We'll to the woods and gather may Fresh from the footprints of the rain. We'll to the woods, at every vein To drink the spirit of the day. 

 The winds of spring are out at play, The needs of spring in heart and brain. We'll to the woods and gather may Fresh from the footprints of the rain. 

 The world's too near her end, you say? Hark to the blackbird's mad refrain! It waits for her, the vast Inane? Then, girls, to help her on the way We'll to the woods and gather may. 

There are fine verses, also, scattered through this little book; some ofthem very strong, as--

 Out of the night that covers me, Black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul. 

 It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul. 

Others with a true touch of romance, as--

 Or ever the knightly years were gone With the old world to the grave, I was a king in Babylon, And you were a Christian slave. 

And here and there we come across such felicitous phrases as--

 In the sand The gold prow-griffin claws a hold, or--

 The spires Shine and are changed, and many other graceful or fanciful lines, even 'the green sky's minorthirds' being perfectly right in its place, and a very refreshing bit ofaffectation in a volume where there is so much that is natural. 

However, Mr. Henley is not to be judged by samples. Indeed, the mostattractive thing in the book is no single poem that is in it, but thestrong humane personality that stands behind both flawless and faultywork alike, and looks out through many masks, some of them beautiful, andsome grotesque, and not a few misshapen. In the case with most of ourmodern poets, when we have analysed them down to an adjective, we can gono further, or we care to go no further; but with this book it isdifferent. Through these reeds and pipes blows the very breath of life. It seems as if one could put one's hand upon the singer's heart and countits pulsations. There is something wholesome, virile and sane about theman's soul. Anybody can be reasonable, but to be sane is not common; andsane poets are as rare as blue lilies, though they may not be quite sodelightful. 

 Let the great winds their worst and wildest blow, Or the gold weather round us mellow slow; We have fulfilled ourselves, and we can dare, And we can conquer, though we may not share In the rich quiet of the afterglow, What is to come, is the concluding stanza of the last rondeau--indeed, of the last poem inthe collection, and the high, serene temper displayed in these linesserves at once as keynote and keystone to the book. The very lightnessand slightness of so much of the work, its careless moods and casualfancies, seem to suggest a nature that is not primarily interested inart--a nature, like Sordello's, passionately enamoured of life, one towhich lyre and lute are things of less importance. From this mere joy ofliving, this frank delight in experience for its own sake, this loftyindifference, and momentary unregretted ardours, come all the faults andall the beauties of the volume. But there is this difference betweenthem--the faults are deliberate, and the result of much study; thebeauties have the air of fascinating impromptus. Mr. Henley's healthy, if sometimes misapplied, confidence in the myriad suggestions of lifegives him his charm. He is made to sing along the highways, not to sitdown and write. If he took himself more seriously, his work would becometrivial. 

* * * * *

Mr. William Sharp takes himself very seriously and has written a prefaceto his Romantic Ballads and Poems of Phantasy, which is, on the whole, the most interesting part of his volume. We are all, it seems, far toocultured, and lack robustness. 'There are those amongst us, ' says Mr. Sharp, 'who would prefer a dexterously-turned triolet to such apparentlyuncouth measures as Thomas the Rhymer, or the ballad of Clerk Saunders:who would rather listen to the drawing-room music of the Villanelle thanto the wild harp-playing by the mill-dams o' Binnorie, or the sough ofthe night-wind o'er drumly Annan water. ' Such an expression as 'thedrawing-room music of the Villanelle' is not very happy, and I cannotimagine any one with the smallest pretensions to culture preferring adexterously turned triolet to a fine imaginative ballad, as it is onlythe Philistine who ever dreams of comparing works of art that areabsolutely different in motive, in treatment, and in form. If EnglishPoetry is in danger--and, according to Mr. Sharp, the poor nymph is in avery critical state--what she has to fear is not the fascination ofdainty metre or delicate form, but the predominance of the intellectualspirit over the spirit of beauty. Lord Tennyson dethroned Wordsworth asa literary influence, and later on Mr. Swinburne filled all the mountainvalleys with echoes of his own song. The influence to-day is that of Mr. Browning. And as for the triolets, and the rondels, and the carefulstudy of metrical subtleties, these things are merely the signs of adesire for perfection in small things and of the recognition of poetry asan art. They have had certainly one good result--they have made ourminor poets readable, and have not left us entirely at the mercy ofgeniuses. 

But, says Mr. Sharp, every one is far too literary; even Rossetti is tooliterary. What we want is simplicity and directness of utterance; theseshould be the dominant characteristics of poetry. Well, is that quite socertain? Are simplicity and directness of utterance absolute essentialsfor poetry? I think not. They may be admirable for the drama, admirablefor all those imitative forms of literature that claim to mirror life inits externals and its accidents, admirable for quiet narrative, admirablein their place; but their place is not everywhere. Poetry has many modesof music; she does not blow through one pipe alone. Directness ofutterance is good, but so is the subtle recasting of thought into a newand delightful form. Simplicity is good, but complexity, mystery, strangeness, symbolism, obscurity even, these have their value. Indeed, properly speaking, there is no such thing as Style; there are merelystyles, that is all. 

One cannot help feeling also that everything that Mr. Sharp says in hispreface was said at the beginning of the century by Wordsworth, onlywhere Wordsworth called us back to nature, Mr. Sharp invites us to wooromance. Romance, he tells us, is 'in the air. ' A new romantic movementis imminent; 'I anticipate, ' he says, 'that many of our poets, especiallythose of the youngest generation, will shortly turn towards the "ballad"as a poetic vehicle: and that the next year or two will see much romanticpoetry. '

The ballad! Well, Mr. Andrew Lang, some months ago, signed the death-warrant of the ballade, and--though I hope that in this respect Mr. Langresembles the Queen in Alice in Wonderland, whose bloodthirsty orderswere by general consent never carried into execution--it must be admittedthat the number of ballades given to us by some of our poets was, perhaps, a little excessive. But the ballad? Sir Patrick Spens, ClerkSaunders, Thomas the Rhymer--are these to be our archetypes, our models, the sources of our inspiration? They are certainly great imaginativepoems. In Chatterton's Ballad of Charity, Coleridge's Rhyme of theAncient Mariner, the La Belle Dame sans Merci of Keats, the Sister Helenof Rossetti, we can see what marvellous works of art the spirit of oldromance may fashion. But to preach a spirit is one thing, to propose aform is another. It is true that Mr. Sharp warns the rising generationagainst imitation. A ballad, he reminds them, does not necessarilydenote a poem in quatrains and in antique language. But his own poems, as I think will be seen later, are, in their way, warnings, and show thedanger of suggesting any definite 'poetic vehicle. ' And, further, aresimplicity and directness of utterance really the dominantcharacteristics of these old imaginative ballads that Mr. Sharp soenthusiastically, and, in some particulars, so wisely praises? It doesnot seem to me to be so. We are always apt to think that the voiceswhich sang at the dawn of poetry were simpler, fresher, and more naturalthan ours, and that the world which the early poets looked at, andthrough which they walked, had a kind of poetical quality of its own, andcould pass, almost without changing, into song. The snow lies thick nowupon Olympus, and its scarped sides are bleak and barren, but once, wefancy, the white feet of the Muses brushed the dew from the anemones inthe morning, and at evening came Apollo to sing to the shepherds in thevale. But in this we are merely lending to other ages what we desire, orthink we desire, for our own. Our historical sense is at fault. Everycentury that produces poetry is, so far, an artificial century, and thework that seems to us the most natural and simple product of its time isprobably the result of the most deliberate and self-conscious effort. ForNature is always behind the age. It takes a great artist to bethoroughly modern. 

Let us turn to the poems, which have really only the preface to blame fortheir somewhat late appearance. The best is undoubtedly The Weird ofMichael Scott, and these stanzas are a fair example of its power:

 Then Michael Scott laughed long and loud: 'Whan shone the mune ahint yon cloud I speered the towers that saw my birth-- Lang, lang, sall wait my cauld grey shroud, Lang cauld and weet my bed o' earth!'

 But as by Stair he rode full speed His horse began to pant and bleed; 'Win hame, win hame, my bonnie mare, Win hame if thou wouldst rest and feed, Win hame, we're nigh the House of Stair!'

 But, with a shrill heart-bursten yell The white horse stumbled, plunged, and fell, And loud a summoning voice arose, 'Is't White-Horse Death that rides frae Hell, Or Michael Scott that hereby goes?'

 'Ah, Laird of Stair, I ken ye weel! Avaunt, or I your saul sall steal, An' send ye howling through the wood A wild man-wolf--aye, ye maun reel An' cry upon your Holy Rood!'

There is a good deal of vigour, no doubt, in these lines; but one cannothelp asking whether this is to be the common tongue of the futureRenaissance of Romance. Are we all to talk Scotch, and to speak of themoon as the 'mune, ' and the soul as the 'saul'? I hope not. And yet ifthis Renaissance is to be a vital, living thing, it must have itslinguistic side. Just as the spiritual development of music, and theartistic development of painting, have always been accompanied, if notoccasioned, by the discovery of some new instrument or some fresh medium, so, in the case of any important literary movement, half of its strengthresides in its language. If it does not bring with it a rich and novelmode of expression, it is doomed either to sterility or to imitation. Dialect, archaisms and the like, will not do. Take, for instance, another poem of Mr. Sharp's, a poem which he calls The Deith-Tide:

 The weet saut wind is blawing Upon the misty shore: As, like a stormy snawing, The deid go streaming o'er:-- The wan drown'd deid sail wildly Frae out each drumly wave: It's O and O for the weary sea, And O for a quiet grave. 

This is simply a very clever pastiche, nothing more, and our language isnot likely to be permanently enriched by such words as 'weet, ' 'saut, ''blawing, ' and 'snawing. ' Even 'drumly, ' an adjective of which Mr. Sharpis so fond that he uses it both in prose and verse, seems to me to behardly an adequate basis for a new romantic movement. 

However, Mr. Sharp does not always write in dialect. The Son of Allancan be read without any difficulty, and Phantasy can be read withpleasure. They are both very charming poems in their way, and none theless charming because the cadences of the one recall Sister Helen, andthe motive of the other reminds us of La Belle Dame sans Merci. Butthose who wish thoroughly to enjoy Mr. Sharp's poems should not read hispreface; just as those who approve of the preface should avoid readingthe poems. I cannot help saying that I think the preface a greatmistake. The work that follows it is quite inadequate, and there seemslittle use in heralding a dawn that rose long ago, and proclaiming aRenaissance whose first-fruits, if we are to judge them by any highstandard of perfection, are of so ordinary a character. 

* * * * *

Miss Mary Robinson has also written a preface to her little volume, Poems, Ballads, and a Garden Play, but the preface is not very serious, and does not propose any drastic change or any immediate revolution inEnglish literature. Miss Robinson's poems have always the charm ofdelicate music and graceful expression; but they are, perhaps, weakestwhere they try to be strong, and certainly least satisfying where theyseek to satisfy. Her fanciful flower-crowned Muse, with her trippingsteps and pretty, wilful ways, should not write Antiphons to theUnknowable, or try to grapple with abstract intellectual problems. Hersis not the hand to unveil mysteries, nor hers the strength for thesolving of secrets. She should never leave her garden, and as for herwandering out into the desert to ask the Sphinx questions, that should besternly forbidden to her. Durer's Melancolia, that serves as thefrontispiece to this dainty book, looks sadly out of place. Her seat iswith the sibyls, not with the nymphs. What has she to do withshepherdesses piping about Darwinism and 'The Eternal Mind'?

However, if the Songs of the Inner Life are not very successful, theSpring Songs are delightful. They follow each other like wind-blownpetals, and make one feel how much more charming flower is than fruit, apple-blossom than apple. There are some artistic temperaments thatshould never come to maturity, that should always remain in the region ofpromise and should dread autumn with its harvesting more than winter withits frosts. Such seems to me the temperament that this volume reveals. The first poem of the second series, La Belle au Bois Dormant, is worthall the more serious and thoughtful work, and has far more chance ofbeing remembered. It is not always to high aim and lofty ambition thatthe prize is given. If Daphne had gone to meet Apollo, she would neverhave known what laurels are. 

From these fascinating spring lyrics and idylls we pass to the romanticballads. One artistic faculty Miss Robinson certainly possesses--thefaculty of imitation. There is an element of imitation in all the arts;it is to be found in literature as much as in painting, and the danger ofvaluing it too little is almost as great as the danger of setting toohigh a value upon it. To catch, by dainty mimicry, the very mood andmanner of antique work, and yet to retain that touch of modern passionwithout which the old form would be dull and empty; to win fromlong-silent lips some faint echo of their music, and to add to it a musicof one's own; to take the mode and fashion of a bygone age, and toexperiment with it, and search curiously for its possibilities; there isa pleasure in all this. It is a kind of literary acting, and hassomething of the charm of the art of the stage-player. And how well, onthe whole, Miss Robinson does it! Here is the opening of the ballad ofRudel:

 There was in all the world of France No singer half so sweet: The first note of his viol brought A crowd into the street. 

 He stepped as young, and bright, and glad As Angel Gabriel. And only when we heard him sing Our eyes forgot Rudel. 

 And as he sat in Avignon, With princes at their wine, In all that lusty company Was none so fresh and fine. 

 His kirtle's of the Arras-blue, His cap of pearls and green; His golden curls fall tumbling round The fairest face I've seen. 

How Gautier would have liked this from the same poem!--

 Hew the timbers of sandal-wood, And planks of ivory; Rear up the shining masts of gold, And let us put to sea. 

 Sew the sails with a silken thread That all are silken too; Sew them with scarlet pomegranates Upon a sheet of blue. 

 Rig the ship with a rope of gold And let us put to sea. And now, good-bye to good Marseilles, And hey for Tripoli!

The ballad of the Duke of Gueldres's wedding is very clever:

 'O welcome, Mary Harcourt, Thrice welcome, lady mine; There's not a knight in all the world Shall be as true as thine. 

 'There's venison in the aumbry, Mary, There's claret in the vat; Come in, and breakfast in the hall Where once my mother sat!'

 O red, red is the wine that flows, And sweet the minstrel's play, But white is Mary Harcourt Upon her wedding-day. 

 O many are the wedding guests That sit on either side; But pale below her crimson flowers And homesick is the bride. 

Miss Robinson's critical sense is at once too sound and too subtle toallow her to think that any great Renaissance of Romance will necessarilyfollow from the adoption of the ballad-form in poetry; but her work inthis style is very pretty and charming, and The Tower of St. Maur, whichtells of the father who built up his little son in the wall of his castlein order that the foundations should stand sure, is admirable in its way. The few touches of archaism in language that she introduces are quitesufficient for their purpose, and though she fully appreciates theimportance of the Celtic spirit in literature, she does not consider itnecessary to talk of 'blawing' and 'snawing. ' As for the garden play, Our Lady of the Broken Heart, as it is called, the bright, birdlikesnatches of song that break in here and there--as the singing does inPippa Passes--form a very welcome relief to the somewhat ordinarymovement of the blank verse, and suggest to us again where MissRobinson's real power lies. Not a poet in the true creative sense, sheis still a very perfect artist in poetry, using language as one might usea very precious material, and producing her best work by the rejection ofthe great themes and large intellectual motives that belong to fuller andricher song. When she essays such themes, she certainly fails. Herinstrument is the reed, not the lyre. Only those should sing of Deathwhose song is stronger than Death is. 

* * * * *

The collected poems of the author of John Halifax, Gentleman, have apathetic interest as the artistic record of a very gracious and comelylife. They bring us back to the days when Philip Bourke Marston wasyoung--'Philip, my King, ' as she called him in the pretty poem of thatname; to the days of the Great Exhibition, with the universal pipingabout peace; to those later terrible Crimean days, when Alma andBalaclava were words on the lips of our poets; and to days when Leonorawas considered a very romantic name. 

 Leonora, Leonora, How the word rolls--Leonora. Lion-like in full-mouthed sound, Marching o'er the metric ground, With a tawny tread sublime. So your name moves, Leonora, Down my desert rhyme. 

Mrs. Craik's best poems are, on the whole, those that are written inblank verse; and these, though not prosaic, remind one that prose was hertrue medium of expression. But some of the rhymed poems haveconsiderable merit. These may serve as examples of Mrs. Craik's style:

 A SKETCH

 Dost thou thus love me, O thou all beloved, In whose large store the very meanest coin Would out-buy my whole wealth? Yet here thou comest Like a kind heiress from her purple and down Uprising, who for pity cannot sleep, But goes forth to the stranger at her gate-- The beggared stranger at her beauteous gate-- And clothes and feeds; scarce blest till she has blest. 

 But dost thou love me, O thou pure of heart, Whose very looks are prayers? What couldst thou see In this forsaken pool by the yew-wood's side, To sit down at its bank, and dip thy hand, Saying, 'It is so clear!'--and lo! ere long, Its blackness caught the shimmer of thy wings, Its slimes slid downward from thy stainless palm, Its depths grew still, that there thy form might rise. 

 THE NOVICE

 It is near morning. Ere the next night fall I shall be made the bride of heaven. Then home To my still marriage-chamber I shall come, And spouseless, childless, watch the slow years crawl. 

 These lips will never meet a softer touch Than the stone crucifix I kiss; no child Will clasp this neck. Ah, virgin-mother mild, Thy painted bliss will mock me overmuch. 

 This is the last time I shall twist the hair My mother's hand wreathed, till in dust she lay: The name, her name given on my baptism day, This is the last time I shall ever bear. 

 O weary world, O heavy life, farewell! Like a tired child that creeps into the dark To sob itself asleep, where none will mark, -- So creep I to my silent convent cell. 

 Friends, lovers whom I loved not, kindly hearts Who grieve that I should enter this still door, Grieve not. Closing behind me evermore, Me from all anguish, as all joy, it parts. 

The volume chronicles the moods of a sweet and thoughtful nature, andthough many things in it may seem somewhat old-fashioned, it is stillvery pleasant to read, and has a faint perfume of withered rose-leavesabout it. 

(1) A Book of Verses. By William Ernest Henley. (David Nutt. )

(2) Romantic Ballads and Poems of Phantasy. By William Sharp. (WalterScott. )

(3) Poems, Ballads, and a Garden Play. By A. Mary F. Robinson. (FisherUnwin. )

(4) Poems. By the Author of John Halifax, Gentleman. (Macmillan andCo. )

SIR EDWIN ARNOLD'S LAST VOLUME

(Pall Mall Gazette, December 11, 1888. )

Writers of poetical prose are rarely good poets. They may crowd theirpage with gorgeous epithet and resplendent phrase, may pile Pelions ofadjectives upon Ossas of descriptions, may abandon themselves to highlycoloured diction and rich luxuriance of imagery, but if their verse lacksthe true rhythmical life of verse, if their method is devoid of the self-restraint of the real artist, all their efforts are of very little avail. 'Asiatic' prose is possibly useful for journalistic purposes, but'Asiatic' poetry is not to be encouraged. Indeed, poetry may be said toneed far more self-restraint than prose. Its conditions are moreexquisite. It produces its effects by more subtle means. It must not beallowed to degenerate into mere rhetoric or mere eloquence. It is, inone sense, the most self-conscious of all the arts, as it is never ameans to an end but always an end in itself. Sir Edwin Arnold has a verypicturesque or, perhaps we should say, a very pictorial style. He knowsIndia better than any living Englishman knows it, and Hindoostanee betterthan any English writer should know it. If his descriptions lackdistinction, they have at least the merit of being true, and when he doesnot interlard his pages with an interminable and intolerable series offoreign words he is pleasant enough. But he is not a poet. He is simplya poetical writer--that is all. 

However, poetical writers have their uses, and there is a good deal inSir Edwin Arnold's last volume that will repay perusal. The scene of thestory is placed in a mosque attached to the monument of the Taj-Mahal, and a group composed of a learned Mirza, two singing girls with theirattendant, and an Englishman, is supposed to pass the night there readingthe chapter of Sa'di upon 'Love, ' and conversing upon that theme withaccompaniments of music and dancing. The Englishman is, of course, SirEdwin Arnold himself:

 lover of India, Too much her lover! for his heart lived there How far soever wandered thence his feet. 

Lady Dufferin appears as

 Lady Duffreen, the mighty Queen's Vice-queen!

which is really one of the most dreadful blank-verse lines that we havecome across for some time past. M. Renan is 'a priest of Frangestan, 'who writes in 'glittering French'; Lord Tennyson is

 One we honour for his songs-- Greater than Sa'di's self--

and the Darwinians appear as the 'Mollahs of the West, ' who

 hold Adam's sons Sprung of the sea-slug. 

All this is excellent fooling in its way, a kind of play-acting inliterature; but the best parts of the book are the descriptions of theTaj itself, which are extremely elaborate, and the various translationsfrom Sa'di with which the volume is interspersed. The great monumentShah Jahan built for Arjamand is

 Instinct with loveliness--not masonry! Not architecture! as all others are, But the proud passion of an Emperor's love Wrought into living stone, which gleams and soars With body of beauty shrining soul and thought, Insomuch that it haps as when some face Divinely fair unveils before our eyes-- Some woman beautiful unspeakably-- And the blood quickens, and the spirit leaps, And will to worship bends the half-yielded knees, Which breath forgets to breathe: so is the Taj; You see it with the heart, before the eyes Have scope to gaze. All white! snow white! cloud white!

We cannot say much in praise of the sixth line:

 Insomuch that it haps as when some face:

it is curiously awkward and unmusical. But this passage from Sa'di isremarkable:

 When Earth, bewildered, shook in earthquake-throes, With mountain-roots He bound her borders close; Turkis and ruby in her rocks He stored, And on her green branch hung His crimson rose. 

 He shapes dull seed to fair imaginings; Who paints with moisture as He painteth things? Look! from the cloud He sheds one drop on ocean, As from the Father's loins one drop He brings;--

 And out of that He forms a peerless pearl, And, out of this, a cypress boy or girl; Utterly wotting all their innermosts, For all to Him is visible! Uncurl

 Your cold coils, Snakes! Creep forth, ye thrifty Ants! Handless and strengthless He provides your wants Who from the 'Is not' planned the 'Is to be, ' And Life in non-existent void implants. 

Sir Edwin Arnold suffers, of course, from the inevitable comparison thatone cannot help making between his work and the work of EdwardFitzgerald, and certainly Fitzgerald could never have written such a lineas 'utterly wotting all their innermosts, ' but it is interesting to readalmost any translation of those wonderful Oriental poets with theirstrange blending of philosophy and sensuousness, of simple parable orfable and obscure mystic utterance. What we regret most in Sir EdwinArnold's book is his habit of writing in what really amounts to a sort of'pigeon English. ' When we are told that 'Lady Duffreen, the mightyQueen's Vice-queen, ' paces among the charpoys of the ward 'no whit afraidof sitla, or of tap'; when the Mirza explains--

 ag lejao! To light the kallians for the Saheb and me, and the attendant obeys with 'Achcha! Achcha!' when we are invited tolisten to 'the Vina and the drum' and told about ekkas, Byragis, hamalsand Tamboora, all that we can say is that to such ghazals we are notprepared to say either Shamash or Afrin. In English poetry we do notwant

 chatkis for the toes, Jasams for elbow-bands, and gote and har, Bala and mala. 

This is not local colour; it is a sort of local discoloration. It doesnot add anything to the vividness of the scene. It does not bring theOrient more clearly before us. It is simply an inconvenience to thereader and a mistake on the part of the writer. It may be difficult fora poet to find English synonyms for Asiatic expressions, but even if itwere impossible it is none the less a poet's duty to find them. We aresorry that a scholar and a man of culture like Sir Edwin Arnold shouldhave been guilty of what is really an act of treason against ourliterature. But for this error, his book, though not in any sense a workof genius or even of high artistic merit, would still have been of someenduring value. As it is, Sir Edwin Arnold has translated Sa'di and someone must translate Sir Edwin Arnold. 

With Sa'di in the Garden; or The Book of Love. By Sir Edwin Arnold, M. A. , K. C. I. E. , Author of The Light of Asia, etc. (Trubner and Co. )

AUSTRALIAN POETS

(Pall Mall Gazette, December 14, 1888. )

Mr. Sladen dedicates his anthology (or, perhaps, we should say hisherbarium) of Australian song to Mr. Edmund Gosse, 'whose exquisitecritical faculty is, ' he tells us, 'as conspicuous in his poems as in hislectures on poetry. ' After so graceful a compliment Mr. Gosse mustcertainly deliver a series of discourses upon Antipodean art before theCambridge undergraduates, who will, no doubt, be very much interested onhearing about Gordon, Kendall and Domett, to say nothing of theextraordinary collection of mediocrities whom Mr. Sladen has somewhatruthlessly dragged from their modest and well-merited obscurity. Gordon, however, is very badly represented in Mr. Sladen's book, the only threespecimens of his work that are included being an unrevised fragment, hisValedictory Poem and An Exile's Farewell. The latter is, of course, touching, but then the commonplace always touches, and it is a great pitythat Mr. Sladen was unable to come to any financial arrangement with theholders of Gordon's copyright. The loss to the volume that now liesbefore us is quite irreparable. Through Gordon Australia found her firstfine utterance in song. 

Still, there are some other singers here well worth studying, and it isinteresting to read about poets who lie under the shadow of the gum-tree, gather wattle blossoms and buddawong and sarsaparilla for their loves, and wander through the glades of Mount Baw-baw listening to the carelessraptures of the mopoke. To them November is

 The wonder with the golden wings, Who lays one hand in Summer's, one in Spring's:

January is full of 'breaths of myrrh, and subtle hints of rose-lands';

 She is the warm, live month of lustre--she Makes glad the land and lulls the strong sad sea;

while February is 'the true Demeter, ' and

 With rich warm vine-blood splashed from heel to knee, Comes radiant through the yellow woodlands. 

Each month, as it passes, calls for new praise and for music differentfrom our own. July is a 'lady, born in wind and rain'; in August

 Across the range, by every scarred black fell, Strong Winter blows his horn of wild farewell;

while October is 'the queen of all the year, ' the 'lady of the yellowhair, ' who strays 'with blossom-trammelled feet' across the'haughty-featured hills, ' and brings the Spring with her. We mustcertainly try to accustom ourselves to the mopoke and the sarsaparillaplant, and to make the gum-tree and the buddawong as dear to us as theolives and the narcissi of white Colonus. After all, the Muses are greattravellers, and the same foot that stirred the Cumnor cowslips may someday brush the fallen gold of the wattle blossoms and tread delicatelyover the tawny bush-grass. 

Mr. Sladen has, of course, a great belief in the possibilities ofAustralian poetry. There are in Australia, he tells us, far more writerscapable of producing good work than has been assumed. It is onlynatural, he adds, that this should be so, 'for Australia has one of thosedelightful climates conducive to rest in the open air. The middle of theday is so hot that it is really more healthful to lounge about than totake stronger exercise. ' Well, lounging in the open air is not a badschool for poets, but it largely depends on the lounger. What strikesone on reading over Mr. Sladen's collection is the depressingprovinciality of mood and manner in almost every writer. Page followspage, and we find nothing but echoes without music, reflections withoutbeauty, second-rate magazine verses and third-rate verses for Colonialnewspapers. Poe seems to have had some influence--at least, there areseveral parodies of his method--and one or two writers have read Mr. Swinburne; but, on the whole, we have artless Nature in her mostirritating form. Of course Australia is young, younger even than Americawhose youth is now one of her oldest and most hallowed traditions, butthe entire want of originality of treatment is curious. And yet not socurious, perhaps, after all. Youth is rarely original. 

There are, however, some exceptions. Henry Clarence Kendall had a truepoetic gift. The series of poems on the Austral months, from which wehave already quoted, is full of beautiful things; Landor's Rose Aylmer isa classic in its way, but Kendall's Rose Lorraine is in parts notunworthy to be mentioned after it; and the poem entitled Beyond Kerguelenhas a marvellous music about it, a wonderful rhythm of words and a realrichness of utterance. Some of the lines are strangely powerful, and, indeed, in spite of its exaggerated alliteration, or perhaps inconsequence of it, the whole poem is a most remarkable work of art. 

 Down in the South, by the waste without sail on it-- Far from the zone of the blossom and tree-- Lieth, with winter and whirlwind and wail on it, Ghost of a land by the ghost of a sea. Weird is the mist from the summit to base of it; Sun of its heaven is wizened and grey; Phantom of light is the light on the face of it-- Never is night on it, never is day! Here is the shore without flower or bird on it; Here is no litany sweet of the springs-- Only the haughty, harsh thunder is heard on it, Only the storm, with a roar in its wings!

 Back in the dawn of this beautiful sphere, on it-- Land of the dolorous, desolate face-- Beamed the blue day; and the beautiful year on it Fostered the leaf and the blossom of grace. Grand were the lights of its midsummer noon on it-- Mornings of majesty shone on its seas; Glitter of star and the glory of moon on it Fell, in the march of the musical breeze. Valleys and hills, with the whisper of wing in them, Dells of the daffodil--spaces impearled, Flowered and flashed with the splendour of spring in them, Back in the morn of this wonderful world. 

Mr. Sladen speaks of Alfred Domett as 'the author of one of the greatpoems of a century in which Shelley and Keats, Byron and Scott, Wordsworth and Tennyson have all flourished, ' but the extracts he givesfrom Ranolf and Amohia hardly substantiate this claim, although the songof the Tree-God in the fourth book is clever but exasperating. 

A Midsummer's Noon, by Charles Harpur, 'the grey forefather of Australianpoetry, ' is pretty and graceful, and Thomas Henry's Wood-Notes and MissVeel's Saturday Night are worth reading; but, on the whole, theAustralian poets are extremely dull and prosaic. There seem to be nosirens in the New World. As for Mr. Sladen himself, he has done his workvery conscientiously. Indeed, in one instance he almost re-writes anentire poem in consequence of the manuscript having reached him in amutilated condition. 

 A pleasant land is the land of dreams _At the back of the shining air_! It hath _sunnier_ skies and _sheenier_ streams, And gardens _than Earth's more_ fair, is the first verse of this lucubration, and Mr. Sladen informs us withjustifiable pride that the parts printed in italics are from his own pen!This is certainly editing with a vengeance, and we cannot help sayingthat it reflects more credit on Mr. Sladen's good nature than on hiscritical or his poetical powers. The appearance, also, in a volume of'poems produced in Australia, ' of selections from Horne's Orion cannot bedefended, especially as we are given no specimen of the poetry Hornewrote during the time that he actually was in Australia, where he heldthe office of 'Warden of the Blue Mountains'--a position which, as far asthe title goes, is the loveliest ever given to any poet, and would havesuited Wordsworth admirably: Wordsworth, that is to say, at his best, forhe not infrequently wrote like the Distributor of Stamps. However, Mr. Sladen has shown great energy in the compilation of this bulky volumewhich, though it does not contain much that is of any artistic value, hasa certain historical interest, especially for those who care to study theconditions of intellectual life in the colonies of a great empire. Thebiographical notices of the enormous crowd of verse-makers which isincluded in this volume are chiefly from the pen of Mr. Patchett Martin. Some of them are not very satisfactory. 'Formerly of West Australia, nowresiding at Boston, U. S. Has published several volumes of poetry, ' is aludicrously inadequate account of such a man as John Boyle O'Reilly, while in 'poet, essayist, critic, and journalist, one of the mostprominent figures in literary London, ' few will recognise the industriousMr. William Sharp. 

Still, on the whole, we should be grateful for a volume that has given usspecimens of Kendall's work, and perhaps Mr. Sladen will some day producean anthology of Australian poetry, not a herbarium of Australian verse. His present book has many good qualities, but it is almost unreadable. 

Australian Poets, 1788-1888. Edited by Douglas B. W. Sladen, B. A. Oxon. (Griffith, Farran and Co. )

SOME LITERARY NOTES--I

(Woman's World, January 1889. )

In a recent article on English Poetesses, {374} I ventured to suggestthat our women of letters should turn their attention somewhat more toprose and somewhat less to poetry. Women seem to me to possess just whatour literature wants--a light touch, a delicate hand, a graceful mode oftreatment, and an unstudied felicity of phrase. We want some one whowill do for our prose what Madame de Sevigne did for the prose of France. George Eliot's style was far too cumbrous, and Charlotte Bronte's tooexaggerated. However, one must not forget that amongst the women ofEngland there have been some charming letter-writers, and certainly nobook can be more delightful reading than Mrs. Ross's Three Generations ofEnglish Women, which has recently appeared. The three Englishwomen whosememoirs and correspondence Mrs. Ross has so admirably edited are Mrs. John Taylor, Mrs. Sarah Austin, and Lady Duff Gordon, all of themremarkable personalities, and two of them women of brilliant wit andEuropean reputation. Mrs. Taylor belonged to that great Norwich familyabout whom the Duke of Sussex remarked that they reversed the ordinarysaying that it takes nine tailors to make a man, and was for many yearsone of the most distinguished figures in the famous society of her nativetown. Her only daughter married John Austin, the great authority onjurisprudence, and her salon in Paris was the centre of the intellect andculture of her day. Lucie Duff Gordon, the only child of John and SarahAustin, inherited the talents of her parents. A beauty, a femmed'esprit, a traveller, and clever writer, she charmed and fascinated herage, and her premature death in Egypt was really a loss to ourliterature. It is to her daughter that we owe this delightful volume ofmemoirs. 

First we are introduced to Mrs. Ross's great-grandmother, Mrs. Taylor, who 'was called, by her intimate friends, "Madame Roland of Norwich, "from her likeness to the portraits of the handsome and unfortunateFrenchwoman. ' We hear of her darning her boy's grey worsted stockingswhile holding her own with Southey and Brougham, and dancing round theTree of Liberty with Dr. Parr when the news of the fall of the Bastillewas first known. Amongst her friends were Sir James Mackintosh, the mostpopular man of the day, 'to whom Madame de Stael wrote, "Il n'y a pas desociete sans vous. " "C'est tres ennuyeux de diner sans vous; la societene va pas quand vous n'etes pas la";' Sir James Smith, the botanist;Crabb Robinson; the Gurneys; Mrs. Barbauld; Dr. Alderson and his charmingdaughter, Amelia Opie; and many other well-known people. Her letters areextremely sensible and thoughtful. 'Nothing at present, ' she says in oneof them, 'suits my taste so well as Susan's Latin lessons, and herphilosophical old master . . . When we get to Cicero's discussions on thenature of the soul, or Virgil's fine descriptions, my mind is filled up. Life is either a dull round of eating, drinking, and sleeping, or a sparkof ethereal fire just kindled. . . . The character of girls must dependupon their reading as much as upon the company they keep. Besides theintrinsic pleasure to be derived from solid knowledge, a woman ought toconsider it as her best resource against poverty. ' This is a somewhatcaustic aphorism: 'A romantic woman is a troublesome friend, as sheexpects you to be as imprudent as herself, and is mortified at what shecalls coldness and insensibility. ' And this is admirable: 'The art oflife is not to estrange oneself from society, and yet not to pay too dearfor it. ' This, too, is good: 'Vanity, like curiosity, is wanted as astimulus to exertion; indolence would certainly get the better of us ifit were not for these two powerful principles'; and there is a keen touchof humour in the following: 'Nothing is so gratifying as the idea thatvirtue and philanthropy are becoming fashionable. ' Dr. James Martineau, in a letter to Mrs. Ross, gives us a pleasant picture of the old ladyreturning from market 'weighted by her huge basket, with the shank of aleg of mutton thrust out to betray its contents, ' and talking divinelyabout philosophy, poets, politics, and every intellectual topic of theday. She was a woman of admirable good sense, a type of Roman matron, and quite as careful as were the Roman matrons to keep up the purity ofher native tongue. 

Mrs. Taylor, however, was more or less limited to Norwich. Mrs. Austinwas for the world. In London, Paris, and Germany, she ruled anddominated society, loved by every one who knew her. 'She is "My best andbrightest" to Lord Jeffrey; "Dear, fair and wise" to Sydney Smith; "Mygreat ally" to Sir James Stephen; "Sunlight through waste welteringchaos" to Thomas Carlyle (while he needed her aid); "La petite mere dugenre humain" to Michael Chevalier; "Liebes Mutterlein" to John StuartMill; and "My own Professorin" to Charles Buller, to whom she taughtGerman, as well as to the sons of Mr. James Mill. ' Jeremy Bentham, whenon his deathbed, gave her a ring with his portrait and some of his hairlet in behind. 'There, my dear, ' he said, 'it is the only ring I evergave a woman. ' She corresponded with Guizot, Barthelemy de St. Hilaire, the Grotes, Dr. Whewell, the Master of Trinity, Nassau Senior, theDuchesse d'Orleans, Victor Cousin, and many other distinguished people. Her translation of Ranke's History of the Popes is admirable; indeed, allher literary work was thoroughly well done, and her edition of herhusband's Province of Jurisprudence deserves the very highest praise. Twopeople more unlike than herself and her husband it would have beendifficult to find. He was habitually grave and despondent; she wasbrilliantly handsome, fond of society, in which she shone, and 'with analmost superabundance of energy and animal spirits, ' Mrs. Ross tells us. She married him because she thought him perfect, but he never producedthe work of which he was worthy, and of which she knew him to be worthy. Her estimate of him in the preface to the Jurisprudence is wonderfullystriking and simple. 'He was never sanguine. He was intolerant of anyimperfection. He was always under the control of severe love of truth. He lived and died a poor man. ' She was terribly disappointed in him, butshe loved him. Some years after his death, she wrote to M. Guizot:

 In the intervals of my study of his works I read his letters to me--_forty-five years of love-letters_, the last as tender and passionate as the first. And how full of noble sentiments! The midday of our lives was clouded and stormy, full of cares and disappointments; but the sunset was bright and serene--as bright as the morning, and _more_ serene. Now it is night with me, and must remain so till the dawn of another day. I am always alone--that is, _I live with him_. 

The most interesting letters in the book are certainly those to M. Guizot, with whom she maintained the closest intellectual friendship; butthere is hardly one of them that does not contain something clever, orthoughtful, or witty, while those addressed to her, in turn, are veryinteresting. Carlyle writes her letters full of lamentations, the wailof a Titan in pain, superbly exaggerated for literary effect. 

 Literature, one's sole craft and staff of life, lies broken in abeyance; what room for music amid the braying of innumerable jackasses, the howling of innumerable hyaenas whetting the tooth to eat them up? Alas for it! it is a sick disjointed time; neither shall we ever mend it; at best let us hope to mend ourselves. I declare I sometimes think of throwing down the Pen altogether as a worthless weapon; and leading out a colony of these poor starving Drudges to the waste places of their old Mother Earth, when for sweat of their brow bread _will_ rise for them; it were perhaps the worthiest service that at this moment could be rendered our old world to throw open for it the doors of the New. Thither must they come at last, 'bursts of eloquence' will do nothing; men are starving and will try many things before they die. But poor I, ach Gott! I am no Hengist or Alaric; only a writer of Articles in bad prose; stick to thy last, O Tutor; the Pen is not worthless, it is omnipotent to those who have Faith. 

Henri Beyle (Stendhal), the great, I am often tempted to think thegreatest of French novelists, writes her a charming letter about nuances. 'It seems to me, ' he says, 'that except when they read Shakespeare, Byron, or Sterne, no Englishman understands "nuances"; we adore them. Afool says to a woman, "I love you"; the words mean nothing, he might aswell say "Olli Batachor"; it is the nuance which gives force to themeaning. ' In 1839 Mrs. Austin writes to Victor Cousin: 'I have seenyoung Gladstone, a distinguished Tory who wants to re-establish educationbased on the Church in quite a Catholic form'; and we find hercorresponding with Mr. Gladstone on the subject of education. 'If youare strong enough to provide motives and checks, ' she says to him, 'youmay do two blessed acts--reform your clergy and teach your people. As itis, how few of them conceive what it is to teach a people'! Mr. Gladstone replies at great length, and in many letters, from which we mayquote this passage:

 You are for pressing and urging the people to their profit against their inclination: so am I. You set little value upon all merely technical instruction, upon all that fails to touch the inner nature of man: so do I. And here I find ground of union broad and deep-laid . . . 

 I more than doubt whether your idea, namely that of raising man to social sufficiency and morality, can be accomplished, except through the ancient religion of Christ; . . . Or whether, the principles of eclecticism are legitimately applicable to the Gospel; or whether, if we find ourselves in a state of incapacity to work through the Church, we can remedy the defect by the adoption of principles contrary to hers . . . 

 But indeed I am most unfit to pursue the subject; private circumstances of no common interest are upon me, as I have become very recently engaged to Miss Glynne, and I hope your recollections will enable you in some degree to excuse me. 

Lord Jeffrey has a very curious and suggestive letter on populareducation, in which he denies, or at least doubts, the effect of thiseducation on morals. He, however, supports it on the ground 'that itwill increase the enjoyment of individuals, ' which is certainly a verysensible claim. Humboldt writes to her about an old Indian languagewhich was preserved by a parrot, the tribe who spoke it having beenexterminated, and about 'young Darwin, ' who had just published his firstbook. Here are some extracts from her own letters:

 I heard from Lord Lansdowne two or three days ago. . . . I think he is ce que nous avons de mieux. He wants only the energy that great ambition gives. He says, 'We shall have a parliament of railway kings' . . . What can be worse than that?--The deification of money by a whole people. As Lord Brougham says, we have no right to give ourselves pharisaical airs. I must give you a story sent to me. Mrs. Hudson, the railway queen, was shown a bust of Marcus Aurelius at Lord Westminster's, on which she said, 'I suppose that is not the present Marquis. ' To gouter this, you must know that the extreme vulgar (hackney coachmen, etc. ) in England pronounce 'marquis' very like 'Marcus. '

 Dec, 11th. --Went to Savigny's. Nobody was there but W. Grimm and his wife and a few men. Grimm told me he had received two volumes of Norwegian fairy-tales, and that they were delightful. Talking of them, I said, 'Your children appear to be the happiest in the world; they live in the midst of fairytales. ' 'Ah, ' said he, 'I must tell you about that. When we were at Gottingen, somebody spoke to my little son about his father's Mahrchen. He had read them, but never thought of their being mine. He came running to me, and said with an offended air, "Father, they say you wrote those fairy-tales; surely you never invented such silly rubbish?" He thought it below my dignity. '

 Savigny told a Volksmahrchen too:

 'St. Anselm was grown old and infirm, and lay on the ground among thorns and thistles. Der liebe Gott said to him, "You are very badly lodged there; why don't you build yourself a house?" "Before I take the trouble, " said Anselm, "I should like to know how long I have to live. " "About thirty years, " said Der liebe Gott. "Oh, for so short a time, " replied he, "it's not worth while, " and turned himself round among the thistles. '

 Dr. Franck told me a story of which I had never heard before. Voltaire had for some reason or other taken a grudge against the prophet Habakkuk, and affected to find in him things he never wrote. Somebody took the Bible and began to demonstrate to him that he was mistaken. 'C'est egal, ' he said, impatiently, 'Habakkuk etait capable de tout!'

 Oct. 30, 1853. 

 I am not in love with the Richtung (tendency) of our modern novelists. There is abundance of talent; but writing a pretty, graceful, touching, yet pleasing story is the last thing our writers nowadays think of. Their novels are party pamphlets on political or social questions, like Sybil, or Alton Locke, or Mary Barton, or Uncle Tom; or they are the most minute and painful dissections of the least agreeable and beautiful parts of our nature, like those of Miss Bronte--Jane Eyre and Villette; or they are a kind of martyrology, like Mrs. Marsh's Emilia Wyndham, which makes you almost doubt whether any torments the heroine would have earned by being naughty could exceed those she incurred by her virtue. 

 Where, oh! where is the charming, humane, gentle spirit that dictated the Vicar of Wakefield--the spirit which Goethe so justly calls versohnend (reconciling), with all the weaknesses and woes of humanity? . . . Have you read Thackeray's Esmond? It is a curious and very successful attempt to imitate the style of our old novelists. . . . Which of Mrs. Gore's novels are translated? They are very clever, lively, worldly, bitter, disagreeable, and entertaining. . . . Miss Austen's--are they translated? They are not new, and are Dutch paintings of every-day people--very clever, very true, very _unaesthetic_, but amusing. I have not seen Ruth, by Mrs. Gaskell. I hear it much admired--and blamed. It is one of the many proofs of the desire women now have to friser questionable topics, and to poser insoluble moral problems. George Sand has turned their heads in that direction. I think a few _broad_ scenes or hearty jokes a la Fielding were very harmless in comparison. They _confounded_ nothing. . . . 

 The Heir of Redcliffe I have not read. . . . I am not worthy of superhuman flights of virtue--in a novel. I want to see how people act and suffer who are as good-for-nothing as I am myself. Then I have the sinful pretension to be amused, whereas all our novelists want to reform us, and to show us what a hideous place this world is: Ma foi, je ne le sais que trap, without their help. 

 The Head of the Family has some merits . . . But there is too much affliction and misery and frenzy. The heroine is one of those creatures now so common (in novels), who remind me of a poor bird tied to a stake (as was once the cruel sport of boys) to be 'shyed' at (i. E. Pelted) till it died; only our gentle lady-writers at the end of all untie the poor battered bird, and assure us that it is never the worse for all the blows it has had--nay, the better--and that now, with its broken wings and torn feathers and bruised body, it is going to be quite happy. No, fair ladies, you know that it is not so--_resigned_, if you please, but make me no shams of happiness out of such wrecks. 

In politics Mrs. Austin was a philosophical Tory. Radicalism shedetested, and she and most of her friends seem to have regarded it asmoribund. 'The Radical party is evidently effete, ' she writes to M. Victor Cousin; the probable 'leader of the Tory party' is Mr. Gladstone. 'The people must be instructed, must be guided, must be, in short, governed, ' she writes elsewhere; and in a letter to Dr. Whewell, she saysthat the state of things in France fills 'me with the deepest anxiety onone point, --the point on which the permanency of our institutions and oursalvation as a nation turn. Are our higher classes able to keep the leadof the rest? If they are, we are safe; if not, I agree with my poor dearCharles Buller--_our_ turn must come. Now Cambridge and Oxford mustreally look to this. ' The belief in the power of the Universities tostem the current of democracy is charming. She grew to regard Carlyle as'one of the dissolvents of the age--as mischievous as his extravaganceswill let him be'; speaks of Kingsley and Maurice as 'pernicious'; andtalks of John Stuart Mill as a 'demagogue. ' She was no doctrinaire. 'Oneounce of education demanded is worth a pound imposed. It is no use togive the meat before you give the hunger. ' She was delighted at a letterof St. Hilaire's, in which he said, 'We have a system and no results; youhave results and no system. ' Yet she had a deep sympathy with the wantsof the people. She was horrified at something Babbage told her of thepopulation of some of the manufacturing towns who are _worked out_ beforethey attain to thirty years of age. 'But I am persuaded that the remedywill not, cannot come from the people, ' she adds. Many of her lettersare concerned with the question of the higher education of women. Shediscusses Buckle's lecture on 'The Influence of Women upon the Progressof Knowledge, ' admits to M. Guizot that women's intellectual life islargely coloured by the emotions, but adds: 'One is not precisely a foolbecause one's opinions are greatly influenced by one's affections. Theopinions of men are often influenced by worse things. ' Dr. Whewellconsults her about lecturing women on Plato, being slightly afraid lestpeople should think it ridiculous; Comte writes her elaborate letters onthe relation of women to progress; and Mr. Gladstone promises that Mrs. Gladstone will carry out at Hawarden the suggestions contained in one ofher pamphlets. She was always very practical, and never lost heradmiration for plain sewing. 

All through the book we come across interesting and amusing things. Shegets St. Hilaire to order a large, sensible bonnet for her in Paris, which was at once christened the 'Aristotelian, ' and was supposed to bethe only useful bonnet in England. Grote has to leave Paris after thecoup d'etat, he tells her, because he cannot bear to see theestablishment of a Greek tyrant. Alfred de Vigny, Macaulay, JohnStirling, Southey, Alexis de Tocqueville, Hallam, and Jean Jacques Ampereall contribute to these pleasant pages. She seems to have inspired thewarmest feelings of friendship in those who knew her. Guizot writes toher: 'Madame de Stael used to say that the best thing in the world was aserious Frenchman. I turn the compliment, and say that the best thing inthe world is an affectionate Englishman. How much more an Englishwoman!Given equal qualities, a woman is always more charming than a man. '

Lucie Austin, afterwards Lady Duff Gordon, was born in 1821. Her chiefplayfellow was John Stuart Mill, and Jeremy Bentham's garden was herplayground. She was a lovely, romantic child, who was always wanting theflowers to talk to her, and used to invent the most wonderful storiesabout animals, of whom she was passionately fond. In 1834 Mrs. Austindecided on leaving England, and Sydney Smith wrote his immortal letter tothe little girl:

 Lucie, Lucie, my dear child, don't tear your frock: tearing frocks is not of itself a proof of genius. But write as your mother writes, act as your mother acts: be frank, loyal, affectionate, simple, honest, and then integrity or laceration of frock is of little import. And Lucie, dear child, mind your arithmetic. You know in the first sum of yours I ever saw there was a mistake. You had carried two (as a cab is licensed to do), and you ought, dear Lucie, to have carried but one. Is this a trifle? What would life be without arithmetic but a scene of horrors? You are going to Boulogne, the city of debts, peopled by men who have never understood arithmetic. By the time you return, I shall probably have received my first paralytic stroke, and shall have lost all recollection of you. Therefore I now give you my parting advice--don't marry anybody who has not a tolerable understanding and a thousand a year. And God bless you, dear child. 

At Boulogne she sat next Heine at table d'hote. 'He heard me speakGerman to my mother, and soon began to talk to me, and then said, "Whenyou go back to England, you can tell your friends that you have seenHeinrich Heine. " I replied, "And who is Heinrich Heine?" He laughedheartily and took no offence at my ignorance; and we used to lounge onthe end of the pier together, where he told me stories in which fish, mermaids, water-sprites and a very funny old French fiddler with a poodlewere mixed up in the most fanciful manner, sometimes humorous, and veryoften pathetic, especially when the water-sprites brought him greetingsfrom the "Nord See. " He was . . . So kind to me and so sarcastic toevery one else. ' Twenty years afterwards the little girl whose 'brauneAugen' Heine had celebrated in his charming poem Wenn ich an deinemHause, used to go and see the dying poet in Paris. 'It does one good, 'he said to her, 'to see a woman who does not carry about a broken heart, to be mended by all sorts of men, like the women here, who do not seethat a total want of heart is their real failing. ' On another occasionhe said to her: 'I have now made peace with the whole world, and at lastalso with God, who sends thee to me as a beautiful angel of death: Ishall certainly soon die. ' Lady Duff Gordon said to him: 'Poor Poet, doyou still retain such splendid illusions, that you transform a travellingEnglishwoman into Azrael? That used not to be the case, for you alwaysdisliked us. ' He answered: 'Yes, I do not know what possessed me todislike the English, . . . It really was only petulance; I never hatedthem, indeed, I never knew them. I was only once in England, but knew noone, and found London very dreary, and the people and the streets odious. But England has revenged herself well; she has sent me most excellentfriends--thyself and Milnes, that good Milnes. '

There are delightful letters from Dicky Doyle here, with the most amusingdrawings, one of the present Sir Robert Peel as he made his maiden speechin the House being excellent; and the various descriptions of Hassan'sperformances are extremely amusing. Hassan was a black boy, who had beenturned away by his master because he was going blind, and was found byLady Duff Gordon one night sitting on her doorstep. She took care ofhim, and had him cured, and he seems to have been a constant source ofdelight to every one. On one occasion, 'when Prince Louis Napoleon (thelate Emperor of the French) came in unexpectedly, he gravely said:"Please, my Lady, I ran out and bought twopenny worth of sprats for thePrince, and for the honour of the house. "' Here is an amusing letterfrom Mrs. Norton:

 MY DEAR LUCIE, --We have never thanked you for the red Pots, which no early Christian should be without, and which add that finishing stroke to the splendour of our demesne, which was supposed to depend on a roc's egg, in less intelligent times. We have now a warm Pompeian appearance, and the constant contemplation of these classical objects favours the beauty of the facial line; for what can be deduced from the great fact, apparent in all the states of antiquity, that _straight noses_ were the ancient custom, but the logical assumption that the constant habit of turning up the nose at unsightly objects--such as the National Gallery and other offensive and obtrusive things--has produced the modern divergence from the true and proper line of profile? I rejoice to think that we ourselves are exempt. I attribute this to our love of Pompeian Pots (on account of the beauty and distinction of this Pot's shape I spell it with a big P), which has kept us straight in a world of crookedness. The pursuit of profiles under difficulties--how much more rare than a pursuit of knowledge! Talk of setting good examples before our children! Bah! let us set good Pompeian Pots before our children, and when they grow up they will not depart from them. 

Lady Duff Gordon's Letters from the Cape, and her brilliant translationof The Amber Witch, are, of course, well known. The latter book was, with Lady Wilde's translation of Sidonia the Sorceress, my favouriteromantic reading when a boy. Her letters from Egypt are wonderfullyvivid and picturesque. Here is an interesting bit of art criticism:

 Sheykh Yoosuf laughed so heartily over a print in an illustrated paper from a picture of Hilton's of Rebekah at the well, with the old 'wekeel' of 'Sidi Ibraheem' (Abraham's chief servant) _kneeling_ before the girl he was sent to fetch, like an old fool without his turban, and Rebekah and the other girls in queer fancy dresses, and the camels with snouts like pigs. 'If the painter could not go into "Es Sham" to see how the Arab really look, ' said Sheykh Yoosuf, 'why did he not paint a well in England, with girls like English peasants--at least it would have looked natural to English people? and the wekeel would not seem so like a madman if he had taken off a hat!' I cordially agree with Yoosuf's art criticism. _Fancy_ pictures of Eastern things are hopelessly absurd. 

Mrs. Ross has certainly produced a most fascinating volume, and her bookis one of the books of the season. It is edited with tact and judgment. 

* * * * *

Caroline, by Lady Lindsay, is certainly Lady Lindsay's best work. It iswritten in a very clever modern style, and is as full of esprit and witas it is of subtle psychological insight. Caroline is an heiress, who, coming downstairs at a Continental hotel, falls into the arms of acharming, penniless young man. The hero of the novel is the young man'sfriend, Lord Lexamont, who makes the 'great renunciation, ' and succeedsin being fine without being priggish, and Quixotic without beingridiculous. Miss Ffoulkes, the elderly spinster, is a capital character, and, indeed, the whole book is cleverly written. It has also theadvantage of being in only one volume. The influence of Mudie onliterature, the baneful influence of the circulating library, is clearlyon the wane. The gain to literature is incalculable. English novelswere becoming very tedious with their three volumes of padding--at least, the second volume was always padding--and extremely indigestible. Areckless punster once remarked to me, apropos of English novels, that'the proof of the padding is in the eating, ' and certainly Englishfiction has been very heavy--heavy with the best intentions. LadyLindsay's book is a sign that better things are in store for us. She isbrief and bright. 

* * * * *

What are the best books to give as Christmas presents to good girls whoare always pretty, or to pretty girls who are occasionally good? Peopleare so fond of giving away what they do not want themselves, that charityis largely on the increase. But with this kind of charity I have notmuch sympathy. If one gives away a book, it should be a charming book--socharming, that one regrets having given it, and would not take it back. Looking over the Christmas books sent to me by various publishers, I findthat these are the best and the most pleasing: Gleanings from the'Graphic, ' by Randolph Caldecott, a most fascinating volume full ofsketches that have real wit and humour of line, and are not simplydependent on what the French call the legende, the literary explanation;Meg's Friend, by Alice Corkran, one of our most delicate and gracefulprose-writers in the sphere of fiction, and one whose work has the rareartistic qualities of refinement and simplicity; Under False Colours, bySarah Doudney, an excellent story; The Fisherman's Daughter, by FlorenceMontgomery, the author of Misunderstood, a tale with real charm of ideaand treatment; Under a Cloud, by the author of The Atelier du Lys, andquite worthy of its author; The Third Miss St. Quentin, by Mrs. Molesworth, and A Christmas Posy from the same fascinating pen, and withdelightful illustrations by Walter Crane. Miss Rosa Mulholland'sGiannetta and Miss Agnes Giberne's Ralph Hardcastle's Will are alsoadmirable books for presents, and the bound volume of Atalanta has muchthat is delightful both in art and in literature. 

The prettiest, indeed the most beautiful, book from an artistic point ofview is undoubtedly Mr. Walter Crane's Flora's Feast. It is animaginative Masque of Flowers, and as lovely in colour as it is exquisitein design. It shows us the whole pomp and pageant of the year, theSnowdrops like white-crested knights, the little naked Crocus kneeling tocatch the sunlight in his golden chalice, the Daffodils blowing theirtrumpets like young hunters, the Anemones with their wind-blown raiment, the green-kirtled Marsh-marigolds, and the 'Lady-smocks allsilver-white, ' tripping over the meadows like Arcadian milk-maids. Buttercups are here, and the white-plumed Thorn in spiky armour, and theCrown-imperial borne in stately procession, and red-bannered Tulips, andHyacinths with their spring bells, and Chaucer's Daisy--

 small and sweet, Si douce est la Marguerite. 

Gorgeous Peonies, and Columbines 'that drew the car of Venus, ' and theRose with her lover, and the stately white-vestured Lilies, and widestaring Ox-eyes, and scarlet Poppies pass before us. There are Primrosesand Corncockles, Chrysanthemums in robes of rich brocade, Sunflowers andtall Hollyhocks, and pale Christmas Roses. The designs for theDaffodils, the wild Roses, the Convolvulus, and the Hollyhock areadmirable, and would be beautiful in embroidery or in any preciousmaterial. Indeed, any one who wishes to find beautiful designs cannot dobetter than get the book. It is, in its way, a little masterpiece, andits grace and fancy, and beauty of line and colour, cannot beover-estimated. The Greeks gave human form to wood and stream, and sawNature best in Naiad or in Dryad. Mr. Crane, with something of Gothicfantasy, has caught the Greek feeling, the love of personification, thepassion for representing things under the conditions of the human form. The flowers are to him so many knights and ladies, page-boys or shepherd-boys, divine nymphs or simple girls, and in their fair bodies or fancifulraiment one can see the flower's very form and absolute essence, so thatone loves their artistic truth no less than their artistic beauty. Thisbook contains some of the best work Mr. Crane has ever done. His art isnever so successful as when it is entirely remote from life. Theslightest touch of actuality seems to kill it. It lives, or should live, in a world of its own fashioning. It is decorative in its completesubordination of fact to beauty of effect, in the grandeur of its curvesand lines, in its entirely imaginative treatment. Almost every page ofthis book gives a suggestion for some rich tapestry, some fine screen, some painted cassone, some carving in wood or ivory. 

* * * * *

From Messrs. Hildesheimer and Faulkner I have received a large collectionof Christmas cards and illustrated books. One of the latter, an editionde luxe of Sheridan's Here's to the Maiden of Bashful Fifteen, is verycleverly illustrated by Miss Alice Havers and Mr. Ernest Wilson. Itseems to me, however, that there is a danger of modern illustrationbecoming too pictorial. What we need is good book-ornament, decorativeornament that will go with type and printing, and give to each page aharmony and unity of effect. Merely dotting a page with reproductions ofwater-colour drawings will not do. It is true that Japanese art, whichis essentially decorative, is pictorial also. But the Japanese have themost wonderful delicacy of touch, and with a science so subtle that itgives the effect of exquisite accident, they can by mere placing make anundecorated space decorative. There is also an intimate connectionbetween their art and their handwriting or printed characters. They bothgo together, and show the same feeling for form and line. Our aim shouldbe to discover some mode of illustration that will harmonise with theshapes of our letters. At present there is a discord between ourpictorial illustrations and our unpictorial type. The former are tooessentially imitative in character, and often disturb a page instead ofdecorating it. However, I suppose we must regard most of these Christmasbooks merely as books of pictures, with a running accompaniment ofexplanatory text. As the text, as a rule, consists of poetry, this isputting the poet in a very subordinate position; but the poetry in thebooks of this kind is not, as a rule, of a very high order of excellence. 

(1) Three Generations of English Women. Memoirs and Correspondence ofSusannah Taylor, Sarah Austin, and Lady Duff Gordon. By Janet Ross, Author of Italian Sketches, Land of Manfred, etc. (Fisher Unwin. )

(2) Caroline. By Lady Lindsay. (Bentley and Son. )

(3) Gleanings from the 'Graphic. ' By Randolph Caldecott. (Routledge andSons. )

(4) Meg's Friend. By Alice Corkran. (Blackie and Sons. )

(5) Under False Colours. By Sarah Doudney. (Blackie and Sons. )

(6) The Fisherman's Daughter. By Florence Montgomery. (Hatchards. )

(7) Under a Cloud. By the Author of The Atelier du Lys. (Hatchards. )

(8) The Third Miss St. Quentin. By Mrs. Molesworth. (Hatchards. )

(9) A Christmas Posy. By Mrs. Molesworth. Illustrated by Walter Crane. (Hatchards. )

(10) Giannetta. A Girl's Story of Herself. By Rosa Mulholland. (Blackieand Sons. )

(11) Ralph Hardcastle's Will. By Agnes Giberne. (Hatchards. )

(12) Flora's Feast. A Masque of Flowers. Penned and Pictured by WalterCrane. (Cassell and Co. )

(13) Here's to the Maiden of Bashful Fifteen. By Richard BrinsleySheridan. Illustrated by Alice Havers and Ernest Wilson. (Hildesheimerand Faulkner. )

POETRY AND PRISON

(Pall Mall Gazette, January 3, 1889. )

Prison has had an admirable effect on Mr. Wilfrid Blunt as a poet. TheLove Sonnets of Proteus, in spite of their clever Musset-like modernitiesand their swift brilliant wit, were but affected or fantastic at best. They were simply the records of passing moods and moments, of which somewere sad and others sweet, and not a few shameful. Their subject was notof high or serious import. They contained much that was wilful and weak. In Vinculis, upon the other hand, is a book that stirs one by its finesincerity of purpose, its lofty and impassioned thought, its depth andardour of intense feeling. 'Imprisonment, ' says Mr. Blunt in hispreface, 'is a reality of discipline most useful to the modern soul, lapped as it is in physical sloth and self-indulgence. Like a sicknessor a spiritual retreat it purifies and ennobles; and the soul emergesfrom it stronger and more self-contained. ' To him, certainly, it hasbeen a mode of purification. The opening sonnets, composed in the bleakcell of Galway Gaol, and written down on the fly-leaves of the prisoner'sprayer-book, are full of things nobly conceived and nobly uttered, andshow that though Mr. Balfour may enforce 'plain living' by his prisonregulations, he cannot prevent 'high thinking' or in any way limit orconstrain the freedom of a man's soul. They are, of course, intenselypersonal in expression. They could not fail to be so. But thepersonality that they reveal has nothing petty or ignoble about it. Thepetulant cry of the shallow egoist which was the chief characteristic ofthe Love Sonnets of Proteus is not to be found here. In its place wehave wild grief and terrible scorn, fierce rage and flame-like passion. Such a sonnet as the following comes out of the very fire of heart andbrain:

 God knows, 'twas not with a fore-reasoned plan I left the easeful dwellings of my peace, And sought this combat with ungodly Man, And ceaseless still through years that do not cease Have warred with Powers and Principalities. My natural soul, ere yet these strifes began, Was as a sister diligent to please And loving all, and most the human clan. 

 God knows it. And He knows how the world's tears Touched me. And He is witness of my wrath, How it was kindled against murderers Who slew for gold, and how upon their path I met them. Since which day the World in arms Strikes at my life with angers and alarms. 

And this sonnet has all the strange strength of that despair which is butthe prelude to a larger hope:

 I thought to do a deed of chivalry, An act of worth, which haply in her sight Who was my mistress should recorded be And of the nations. And, when thus the fight Faltered and men once bold with faces white Turned this and that way in excuse to flee, I only stood, and by the foeman's might Was overborne and mangled cruelly. 

 Then crawled I to her feet, in whose dear cause I made this venture, and 'Behold, ' I said, 'How I am wounded for thee in these wars. ' But she, 'Poor cripple, would'st thou I should wed A limbless trunk?' and laughing turned from me. Yet she was fair, and her name 'Liberty. '

The sonnet beginning

 A prison is a convent without God-- Poverty, Chastity, Obedience Its precepts are:

is very fine; and this, written just after entering the gaol, ispowerful:

 Naked I came into the world of pleasure, And naked come I to this house of pain. Here at the gate I lay down my life's treasure, My pride, my garments and my name with men. The world and I henceforth shall be as twain, No sound of me shall pierce for good or ill These walls of grief. Nor shall I hear the vain Laughter and tears of those who love me still. 

 Within, what new life waits me! Little ease, Cold lying, hunger, nights of wakefulness, Harsh orders given, no voice to soothe or please, Poor thieves for friends, for books rules meaningless; This is the grave--nay, hell. Yet, Lord of Might, Still in Thy light my spirit shall see light. 

But, indeed, all the sonnets are worth reading, and The Canon of Aughrim, the longest poem in the book, is a most masterly and dramatic descriptionof the tragic life of the Irish peasant. Literature is not much indebtedto Mr. Balfour for his sophistical Defence of Philosophic Doubt which isone of the dullest books we know, but it must be admitted that by sendingMr. Blunt to gaol he has converted a clever rhymer into an earnest anddeep-thinking poet. The narrow confines of the prison cell seem to suitthe 'sonnet's scanty plot of ground, ' and an unjust imprisonment for anoble cause strengthens as well as deepens the nature. 

In Vinculis. By Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, Author of The Wind and theWhirlwind, The Love Sonnets of Proteus, etc. Etc. (Kegan Paul. )

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO WALT WHITMAN

(Pall Mall Gazette, January 25, 1889. )

'No one will get at my verses who insists upon viewing them as a literaryperformance . . . Or as aiming mainly toward art and aestheticism. ''Leaves of Grass . . . Has mainly been the outcropping of my ownemotional and other personal nature--an attempt, from first to last, toput _a Person_, a human being (myself, in the latter half of theNineteenth Century in America, ) freely, fully and truly on record. Icould not find any similar personal record in current literature thatsatisfied me. ' In these words Walt Whitman gives us the true attitude weshould adopt towards his work, having, indeed, a much saner view of thevalue and meaning of that work than either his eloquent admirers or noisydetractors can boast of possessing. His last book, November Boughs, ashe calls it, published in the winter of the old man's life, reveals tous, not indeed a soul's tragedy, for its last note is one of joy andhope, and noble and unshaken faith in all that is fine and worthy of suchfaith, but certainly the drama of a human soul, and puts on record with asimplicity that has in it both sweetness and strength the record of hisspiritual development, and of the aim and motive both of the manner andthe matter of his work. His strange mode of expression is shown in thesepages to have been the result of deliberate and self-conscious choice. The 'barbaric yawp' which he sent over 'the roofs of the world' so manyyears ago, and which wrung from Mr. Swinburne's lip such lofty panegyricin song and such loud clamorous censure in prose, appears here in whatwill be to many an entirely new light. For in his very rejection of artWalt Whitman is an artist. He tried to produce a certain effect bycertain means and he succeeded. There is much method in what many havetermed his madness, too much method, indeed, some may be tempted tofancy. 

In the story of his life, as he tells it to us, we find him at the age ofsixteen beginning a definite and philosophical study of literature:

 Summers and falls, I used to go off, sometimes for a week at a stretch, down in the country, or to Long Island's seashores--there, in the presence of outdoor influences, I went over thoroughly the Old and New Testaments, and absorb'd (probably to better advantage for me than in any library or indoor room--it makes such difference _where_ you read) Shakspere, Ossian, the best translated versions I could get of Homer, Eschylus, Sophocles, the old German Nibelungen, the ancient Hindoo poems, and one or two other masterpieces, Dante's among them. As it happened, I read the latter mostly in an old wood. The Iliad . . . I read first thoroughly on the peninsula of Orient, northeast end of Long Island, in a sheltered hollow of rock and sand, with the sea on each side. (I have wonder'd since why I was not overwhelmed by those mighty masters. Likely because I read them, as described, in the full presence of Nature, under the sun, with the far-spreading landscape and vistas, or the sea rolling in. )

Edgar Allan Poe's amusing bit of dogmatism that, for our occasions andour day, 'there can be no such thing as a long poem, ' fascinated him. 'The same thought had been haunting my mind before, ' he said, 'but Poe'sargument . . . Work'd the sum out, and proved it to me, ' and the Englishtranslation of the Bible seems to have suggested to him the possibilityof a poetic form which, while retaining the spirit of poetry, would stillbe free from the trammels of rhyme and of a definite metrical system. Having thus, to a certain degree, settled upon what one might call the'technique' of Whitmanism, he began to brood upon the nature of thatspirit which was to give life to the strange form. The central point ofthe poetry of the future seemed to him to be necessarily 'an identicalbody and soul, a personality, ' in fact, which personality, he tells usfrankly, 'after many considerations and ponderings I deliberately settledshould be myself. ' However, for the true creation and revealing of thispersonality, at first only dimly felt, a new stimulus was needed. Thiscame from the Civil War. After describing the many dreams and passionsof his boyhood and early manhood, he goes on to say:

 These, however, and much more might have gone on and come to naught (almost positively would have come to naught, ) if a sudden, vast, terrible, direct and indirect stimulus for new and national declamatory expression had not been given to me. It is certain, I say, that although I had made a start before, only from the occurrence of the Secession War, and what it show'd me as by flashes of lightning, with the emotional depths it sounded and arous'd (of course, I don't mean in my own heart only, I saw it just as plainly in others, in millions)--that only from the strong flare and provocation of that war's sights and scenes the final reasons-for-being of an autochthonic and passionate song definitely came forth. 

 I went down to the war fields of Virginia . . . Lived thenceforward in camp--saw great battles and the days and nights afterward--partook of all the fluctuations, gloom, despair, hopes again arous'd, courage evoked--death readily risk'd--_the cause_, too--along and filling those agonistic and lurid following years . . . The real parturition years . . . Of this henceforth homogeneous Union. Without those three or four years and the experiences they gave, Leaves of Grass would not now be existing. 

Having thus obtained the necessary stimulus for the quickening andawakening of the personal self, some day to be endowed with universality, he sought to find new notes of song, and, passing beyond the mere passionfor expression, he aimed at 'Suggestiveness' first. 

 I round and finish little, if anything; and could not, consistently with my scheme. The reader will have his or her part to do, just as much as I have had mine. I seek less to state or display any theme or thought, and more to bring you, reader, into the atmosphere of the theme or thought--there to pursue your own flight. 

Another 'impetus-word' is Comradeship, and other 'word-signs' are GoodCheer, Content and Hope. Individuality, especially, he sought for:

 I have allowed the stress of my poems from beginning to end to bear upon American individuality and assist it--not only because that is a great lesson in Nature, amid all her generalising laws, but as counterpoise to the leveling tendencies of Democracy--and for other reasons. Defiant of ostensible literary and other conventions, I avowedly chant 'the great pride of man in himself, ' and permit it to be more or less a motif of nearly all my verse. I think this pride indispensable to an American. I think it not inconsistent with obedience, humility, deference, and self-questioning. 

A new theme also was to be found in the relation of the sexes, conceivedin a natural, simple and healthy form, and he protests against poor Mr. William Rossetti's attempt to Bowdlerise and expurgate his song. 

 From another point of view Leaves of Grass is avowedly the song of Sex and Amativeness, and even Animality--though meanings that do not usually go along with these words are behind all, and will duly emerge; and all are sought to be lifted into a different light and atmosphere. Of this feature, intentionally palpable in a few lines, I shall only say the espousing principle of those lines so gives breath to my whole scheme that the bulk of the pieces might as well have been left unwritten were those lines omitted. . . . 

 Universal as are certain facts and symptoms of communities . . . There is nothing so rare in modern conventions and poetry as their normal recognizance. Literature is always calling in the doctor for consultation and confession, and always giving evasions and swathing suppressions in place of that 'heroic nudity, ' on which only a genuine diagnosis . . . Can be built. And in respect to editions of Leaves of Grass in time to come (if there should be such) I take occasion now to confirm those lines with the settled convictions and deliberate renewals of thirty years, and to hereby prohibit, as far as word of mine can do so, any elision of them. 

But beyond all these notes and moods and motives is the lofty spirit of agrand and free acceptance of all things that are worthy of existence. Hedesired, he says, 'to formulate a poem whose every thought or fact shoulddirectly or indirectly be or connive at an implicit belief in the wisdom, health, mystery, beauty of every process, every concrete object, everyhuman or other existence, not only consider'd from the point of view ofall, but of each. ' His two final utterances are that 'really greatpoetry is always . . . The result of a national spirit, and not theprivilege of a polish'd and select few'; and that 'the strongest andsweetest songs yet remain to be sung. '

Such are the views contained in the opening essay A Backward Glance O'erTravel'd Roads, as he calls it; but there are many other essays in thisfascinating volume, some on poets such as Burns and Lord Tennyson, forwhom Walt Whitman has a profound admiration; some on old actors andsingers, the elder Booth, Forrest, Alboni and Mario being his specialfavourites; others on the native Indians, on the Spanish element inAmerican nationality, on Western slang, on the poetry of the Bible, andon Abraham Lincoln. But Walt Whitman is at his best when he is analysinghis own work and making schemes for the poetry of the future. Literature, to him, has a distinctly social aim. He seeks to build up the masses by'building up grand individuals. ' And yet literature itself must bepreceded by noble forms of life. 'The best literature is always theresult of something far greater than itself--not the hero but theportrait of the hero. Before there can be recorded history or poem theremust be the transaction. ' Certainly, in Walt Whitman's views there is alargeness of vision, a healthy sanity and a fine ethical purpose. He isnot to be placed with the professional litterateurs of his country, Boston novelists, New York poets and the like. He stands apart, and thechief value of his work is in its prophecy, not in its performance. Hehas begun a prelude to larger themes. He is the herald to a new era. Asa man he is the precursor of a fresh type. He is a factor in the heroicand spiritual evolution of the human being. If Poetry has passed him by, Philosophy will take note of him. 

November Boughs. By Walt Whitman. (Alexander Gardner. )

THE NEW PRESIDENT

(Pall Mall Gazette, January 26, 1889. )

In a little book that he calls The Enchanted Island Mr. Wyke Bayliss, thenew President of the Royal Society of British Artists, has given hisgospel of art to the world. His predecessor in office had also a gospelof art but it usually took the form of an autobiography. Mr. Whistleralways spelt art, and we believe still spells it, with a capital 'I. 'However, he was never dull. His brilliant wit, his caustic satire, andhis amusing epigrams, or, perhaps, we should say epitaphs, on hiscontemporaries, made his views on art as delightful as they weremisleading and as fascinating as they were unsound. Besides, heintroduced American humour into art criticism, and for this, if for noother reason, he deserves to be affectionately remembered. Mr. WykeBayliss, upon the other hand, is rather tedious. The last Presidentnever said much that was true, but the present President never saysanything that is new; and, if art be a fairy-haunted wood or an enchantedisland, we must say that we prefer the old Puck to the fresh Prospero. Water is an admirable thing--at least, the Greeks said it was--and Mr. Ruskin is an admirable writer; but a combination of both is a littledepressing. 

Still, it is only right to add that Mr. Wyke Bayliss, at his best, writesvery good English. Mr. Whistler, for some reason or other, alwaysadopted the phraseology of the minor prophets. Possibly it was in orderto emphasise his well-known claims to verbal inspiration, or perhaps hethought with Voltaire that Habakkuk etait capable de tout, and wished toshelter himself under the shield of a definitely irresponsible writernone of whose prophecies, according to the French philosopher, has everbeen fulfilled. The idea was clever enough at the beginning, butultimately the manner became monotonous. The spirit of the Hebrews isexcellent but their mode of writing is not to be imitated, and no amountof American jokes will give it that modernity which is essential to agood literary style. Admirable as are Mr. Whistler's fireworks oncanvas, his fireworks in prose are abrupt, violent and exaggerated. However, oracles, since the days of the Pythia, have never beenremarkable for style, and the modest Mr. Wyke Bayliss is as much Mr. Whistler's superior as a writer as he is his inferior as a painter and anartist. Indeed, some of the passages in this book are so charminglywritten and with such felicity of phrase that we cannot help feeling thatthe President of the British Artists, like a still more famous Presidentof our day, can express himself far better through the medium ofliterature than he can through the medium of line and colour. This, however, applies only to Mr. Wyke Bayliss's prose. His poetry is verybad, and the sonnets at the end of the book are almost as mediocre as thedrawings that accompany them. As we read them we cannot but regret that, in this point at any rate, Mr. Bayliss has not imitated the wise exampleof his predecessor who, with all his faults, was never guilty of writinga line of poetry, and is, indeed, quite incapable of doing anything ofthe kind. 

As for the matter of Mr. Bayliss's discourses, his views on art must beadmitted to be very commonplace and old-fashioned. What is the use oftelling artists that they should try and paint Nature as she really is?What Nature really is, is a question for metaphysics not for art. Artdeals with appearances, and the eye of the man who looks at Nature, thevision, in fact, of the artist, is far more important to us than what helooks at. There is more truth in Corot's aphorism that a landscape issimply 'the mood of a man's mind' than there is in all Mr. Bayliss'slaborious disquisitions on naturalism. Again, why does Mr. Bayliss wastea whole chapter in pointing out real or supposed resemblances between abook of his published twelve years ago and an article by Mr. Palgravewhich appeared recently in the Nineteenth Century? Neither the book northe article contains anything of real interest, and as for the hundred ormore parallel passages which Mr. Wyke Bayliss solemnly prints side byside, most of them are like parallel lines and never meet. The onlyoriginal proposal that Mr. Bayliss has to offer us is that the House ofCommons should, every year, select some important event from national andcontemporary history and hand it over to the artists who are to choosefrom among themselves a man to make a picture of it. In this way Mr. Bayliss believes that we could have the historic art, and suggests asexamples of what he means a picture of Florence Nightingale in thehospital at Scutari, a picture of the opening of the first London Board-school, and a picture of the Senate House at Cambridge with the girlgraduate receiving a degree 'that shall acknowledge her to be as wise asMerlin himself and leave her still as beautiful as Vivien. ' Thisproposal is, of course, very well meant, but, to say nothing of thedanger of leaving historic art at the mercy of a majority in the House ofCommons, who would naturally vote for its own view of things, Mr. Baylissdoes not seem to realise that a great event is not necessarily apictorial event. 'The decisive events of the world, ' as has been wellsaid, 'take place in the intellect, ' and as for Board-schools, academicceremonies, hospital wards and the like, they may well be left to theartists of the illustrated papers, who do them admirably and quite aswell as they need be done. Indeed, the pictures of contemporary events, Royal marriages, naval reviews and things of this kind that appear in theAcademy every year, are always extremely bad; while the very samesubjects treated in black and white in the Graphic or the London News areexcellent. Besides, if we want to understand the history of a nationthrough the medium of art, it is to the imaginative and ideal arts thatwe have to go and not to the arts that are definitely imitative. Thevisible aspect of life no longer contains for us the secret of life'sspirit. Probably it never did contain it. And, if Mr. Barker's WaterlooBanquet and Mr. Frith's Marriage of the Prince of Wales are examples ofhealthy historic art, the less we have of such art the better. However, Mr. Bayliss is full of the most ardent faith and speaks quite gravely ofgenuine portraits of St. John, St. Peter and St. Paul dating from thefirst century, and of the establishment by the Israelites of a school ofart in the wilderness under the now little appreciated Bezaleel. He is apleasant, picturesque writer, but he should not speak about art. Art isa sealed book to him. 

The Enchanted Island. By Wyke Bayliss, F. S. A. , President of the RoyalSociety of British Artists. (Allen and Co. )

SOME LITERARY NOTES--II

(Woman's World, February 1889. )

'The various collectors of Irish folk-lore, ' says Mr. W. B. Yeats in hischarming little book Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry, 'have, from our point of view, one great merit, and from the point of view ofothers, one great fault. '

 They have made their work literature rather than science, and told us of the Irish peasantry rather than of the primitive religion of mankind, or whatever else the folk-lorists are on the gad after. To be considered scientists they should have tabulated all their tales in forms like grocers' bills--item the fairy king, item the queen. Instead of this they have caught the very voice of the people, the very pulse of life, each giving what was most noticed in his day. Croker and Lover, full of the ideas of harum-scarum Irish gentility, saw everything humorised. The impulse of the Irish literature of their time came from a class that did not--mainly for political reasons--take the populace seriously, and imagined the country as a humorist's Arcadia; its passion, its gloom, its tragedy, they knew nothing of. What they did was not wholly false; they merely magnified an irresponsible type, found oftenest among boatmen, carmen, and gentlemen's servants, into the type of a whole nation, and created the stage Irishman. The writers of 'Forty-eight, and the famine combined, burst their bubble. Their work had the dash as well as the shallowness of an ascendant and idle class, and in Croker is touched everywhere with beauty--a gentle Arcadian beauty. Carleton, a peasant born, has in many of his stories, . . . More especially in his ghost stories, a much more serious way with him, for all his humour. Kennedy, an old bookseller in Dublin, who seems to have had a something of genuine belief in the fairies, comes next in time. He has far less literary faculty, but is wonderfully accurate, giving often the very words the stories were told in. But the best book since Croker is Lady Wilde's Ancient Legends. The humour has all given way to pathos and tenderness. We have here the innermost heart of the Celt in the moments he has grown to love through years of persecution, when, cushioning himself about with dreams, and hearing fairy-songs in the twilight, he ponders on the soul and on the dead. Here is the Celt, only it is the Celt dreaming. 

Into a volume of very moderate dimensions, and of extremely moderateprice, Mr. Yeats has collected together the most characteristic of ourIrish folklore stories, grouping them together according to subject. First come The Trooping Fairies. The peasants say that these are 'fallenangels who were not good enough to be saved, nor bad enough to be lost';but the Irish antiquarians see in them 'the gods of pagan Ireland, ' who, 'when no longer worshipped and fed with offerings, dwindled away in thepopular imagination, and now are only a few spans high. ' Their chiefoccupations are feasting, fighting, making love, and playing the mostbeautiful music. 'They have only one industrious person amongst them, the lepra-caun--the shoemaker. ' It is his duty to repair their shoeswhen they wear them out with dancing. Mr. Yeats tells us that 'near thevillage of Ballisodare is a little woman who lived amongst them sevenyears. When she came home she had no toes--she had danced them off. ' OnMay Eve, every seventh year, they fight for the harvest, for the bestears of grain belong to them. An old man informed Mr. Yeats that he sawthem fight once, and that they tore the thatch off a house. 'Had any oneelse been near they would merely have seen a great wind whirlingeverything into the air as it passed. ' When the wind drives the leavesand straws before it, 'that is the fairies, and the peasants take offtheir hats and say "God bless them. "' When they are gay, they sing. Manyof the most beautiful tunes of Ireland 'are only their music, caught upby eavesdroppers. ' No prudent peasant would hum The Pretty Girl Milkingthe Cow near a fairy rath, 'for they are jealous, and do not like to heartheir songs on clumsy mortal lips. ' Blake once saw a fairy's funeral. But this, as Mr. Yeats points out, must have been an English fairy, forthe Irish fairies never die; they are immortal. 

Then come The Solitary Fairies, amongst whom we find the little Lepracaunmentioned above. He has grown very rich, as he possesses all thetreasure-crocks buried in war-time. In the early part of this century, according to Croker, they used to show in Tipperary a little shoeforgotten by the fairy shoemaker. Then there are two rather disreputablelittle fairies--the Cluricaun, who gets intoxicated in gentlemen'scellars, and the Red Man, who plays unkind practical jokes. 'The Fear-Gorta (Man of Hunger) is an emaciated phantom that goes through the landin famine time, begging an alms and bringing good luck to the giver. ' TheWater-sheerie is 'own brother to the English Jack-o'-Lantern. ' 'TheLeanhaun Shee (fairy mistress) seeks the love of mortals. If theyrefuse, she must be their slave; if they consent, they are hers, and canonly escape by finding another to take their place. The fairy lives ontheir life, and they waste away. Death is no escape from her. She isthe Gaelic muse, for she gives inspiration to those she persecutes. TheGaelic poets die young, for she is restless, and will not let them remainlong on earth. ' The Pooka is essentially an animal spirit, and some haveconsidered him the forefather of Shakespeare's 'Puck. ' He lives onsolitary mountains, and among old ruins 'grown monstrous with muchsolitude, ' and 'is of the race of the nightmare. ' 'He has many shapes--isnow a horse, . . . Now a goat, now an eagle. Like all spirits, he isonly half in the world of form. ' The banshee does not care much for ourdemocratic levelling tendencies; she loves only old families, anddespises the parvenu or the nouveau riche. When more than one banshee ispresent, and they wail and sing in chorus, it is for the death of someholy or great one. An omen that sometimes accompanies the banshee is '.. . An immense black coach, mounted by a coffin, and drawn by headlesshorses driven by a Dullahan. ' A Dullahan is the most terrible thing inthe world. In 1807 two of the sentries stationed outside St. James'sPark saw one climbing the railings, and died of fright. Mr. Yeatssuggests that they are possibly 'descended from that Irish giant who swamacross the Channel with his head in his teeth. '

Then come the stories of ghosts, of saints and priests, and of giants. The ghosts live in a state intermediary between this world and the next. They are held there by some earthly longing or affection, or some dutyunfulfilled, or anger against the living; they are those who are too goodfor hell, and too bad for heaven. Sometimes they 'take the forms ofinsects, especially of butterflies. ' The author of the Parochial Surveyof Ireland 'heard a woman say to a child who was chasing a butterfly, "How do you know it is not the soul of your grandfather?" On Novembereve they are abroad, and dance with the fairies. ' As for the saints andpriests, 'there are no martyrs in the stories. ' That ancient chroniclerGiraldus Cambrensis 'taunted the Archbishop of Cashel, because no one inIreland had received the crown of martyrdom. "Our people may bebarbarous, " the prelate answered, "but they have never lifted their handsagainst God's saints; but now that a people have come amongst us who knowhow to make them (it was just after the English invasion), we shall havemartyrs plentifully. "' The giants were the old pagan heroes of Ireland, who grew bigger and bigger, just as the gods grew smaller and smaller. The fact is they did not wait for offerings; they took them vi et armis. 

Some of the prettiest stories are those that cluster round Tir-na-n-Og. This is the Country of the Young, 'for age and death have not found it;neither tears nor loud laughter have gone near it. ' 'One man has gonethere and returned. The bard, Oisen, who wandered away on a white horse, moving on the surface of the foam with his fairy Niamh lived there threehundred years, and then returned looking for his comrades. The momenthis foot touched the earth his three hundred years fell on him, and hewas bowed double, and his beard swept the ground. He described hissojourn in the Land of Youth to Patrick before he died. ' Since then, according to Mr. Yeats, 'many have seen it in many places; some in thedepths of lakes, and have heard rising therefrom a vague sound of bells;more have seen it far off on the horizon, as they peered out from thewestern cliffs. Not three years ago a fisherman imagined that he sawit. '

Mr. Yeats has certainly done his work very well. He has shown greatcritical capacity in his selection of the stories, and his littleintroductions are charmingly written. It is delightful to come across acollection of purely imaginative work, and Mr. Yeats has a very quickinstinct in finding out the best and the most beautiful things in Irishfolklore. I am also glad to see that he has not confined himselfentirely to prose, but has included Allingham's lovely poem on TheFairies:

 Up the airy mountain, Down the rushy glen, We daren't go a-hunting For fear of little men; Wee folk, good folk, Trooping all together; Green jacket, red cap, And white owl's feather!

 Down along the rocky shore Some make their home, They live on crispy pancakes Of yellow tide-foam; Some in the reeds Of the black mountain lake, With frogs for their watch-dogs All night awake. 

 High on the hill-top The old King sits; He is now so old and gray He's nigh lost his wits. With a bridge of white mist Columbkill he crosses, On his stately journeys From Slieveleague to Rosses; Or going up with music, On cold starry nights, To sup with the Queen Of the gay Northern Lights. 

All lovers of fairy tales and folklore should get this little book. TheHorned Women, The Priest's Soul, {411} and Teig O'Kane, are reallymarvellous in their way; and, indeed, there is hardly a single story thatis not worth reading and thinking over. 

The wittiest writer in France at present is a woman. That clever, thatspirituelle grande dame, who has adopted the pseudonym of 'Gyp, ' has inher own country no rival. Her wit, her delicate and delightful esprit, her fascinating modernity, and her light, happy touch, give her a uniqueposition in that literary movement which has taken for its object thereproduction of contemporary life. Such books as Autour du Mariage, Autour du Divorce, and Le Petit Bob, are, in their way, little playfulmasterpieces, and the only work in England that we could compare withthem is Violet Fane's Edwin and Angelina Papers. To the same brilliantpen which gave us these wise and witty studies of modern life we owe nowa more serious, more elaborate production. Helen Davenant is asearnestly wrought out as it is cleverly conceived. If it has a fault, itis that it is too full of matter. Out of the same material a moreeconomical writer would have made two novels and half a dozenpsychological studies for publication in American magazines. Thackerayonce met Bishop Wilberforce at dinner at Dean Stanley's, and, afterlistening to the eloquent prelate's extraordinary flow and fund ofstories, remarked to his neighbour, 'I could not afford to spend at thatrate. ' Violet Fane is certainly lavishly extravagant of incident, plot, and character. But we must not quarrel with richness of subject-matterat a time when tenuity of purpose and meagreness of motive seem to bebecoming the dominant notes of contemporary fiction. The side-issues ofthe story are so complex that it is difficult, almost impossible, todescribe the plot in any adequate manner. The interest centres round ayoung girl, Helen Davenant by name, who contracts a private andclandestine marriage with one of those mysterious and fascinating foreignnoblemen who are becoming so invaluable to writers of fiction, either innarrative or dramatic form. Shortly after the marriage her husband isarrested for a terrible murder committed some years before in Russia, under the evil influence of occult magic and mesmerism. The crime wasdone in a hypnotic state, and, as described by Violet Fane, seems muchmore probable than the actual hypnotic experiments recorded in scientificpublications. This is the supreme advantage that fiction possesses overfact. It can make things artistically probable; can call for imaginativeand realistic credence; can, by force of mere style, compel us tobelieve. The ordinary novelists, by keeping close to the ordinaryincidents of commonplace life, seem to me to abdicate half their power. Romance, at any rate, welcomes what is wonderful; the temper of wonder ispart of her own secret; she loves what is strange and curious. Butbesides the marvels of occultism and hypnotism, there are many otherthings in Helen Davenant that are worthy of study. Violet Fane writes anadmirable style. The opening chapter of the book, with its terriblepoignant tragedy, is most powerfully written, and I cannot help wonderingthat the clever authoress cared to abandon, even for a moment, the superbpsychological opportunity that this chapter affords. The touches ofnature, the vivid sketches of high life, the subtle renderings of thephases and fancies of society, are also admirably done. Helen Davenantis certainly clever, and shows that Violet Fane can write prose that isas good as her verse, and can look at life not merely from the point ofview of the poet, but also from the standpoint of the philosopher, thekeen observer, the fine social critic. To be a fine social critic is nosmall thing, and to be able to incorporate in a work of fiction theresults of such careful observation is to achieve what is out of thereach of many. The difficulty under which the novelists of our daylabour seems to me to be this: if they do not go into society, theirbooks are unreadable; and if they do go into society, they have no timeleft for writing. However, Violet Fane has solved the problem. 

 The chronicles which I am about to present to the reader are not the result of any conscious effort of the imagination. They are, as the title-page indicates, records of dreams occurring at intervals during the last ten years, and transcribed, pretty nearly in the order of their occurrence, from my diary. Written down as soon as possible after awaking from the slumber during which they presented themselves, these narratives, necessarily unstudied in style, and wanting in elegance of diction, have at least the merit of fresh and vivid colour; for they were committed to paper at a moment when the effect and impress of each successive vision were strong and forceful on the mind. . . . 

 The most remarkable features of the experiences I am about to record are the methodical consecutiveness of their sequences, and the intelligent purpose disclosed alike in the events witnessed and in the words heard or read. . . . I know of no parallel to this phenomenon, unless in the pages of Bulwer Lytton's romance entitled The Pilgrims of the Rhine, in which is related the story of a German student endowed with so marvellous a faculty of dreaming, that for him the normal conditions of sleeping and waking became reversed; his true life was that which he lived in his slumbers, and his hours of wakefulness appeared to him as so many uneventful and inactive intervals of arrest, occurring in an existence of intense and vivid interest which was wholly passed in the hypnotic state. . . . 

 During the whole period covered by these dreams I have been busily and almost continuously engrossed with scientific and literary pursuits, demanding accurate judgment and complete self-possession and rectitude of mind. At the time when many of the most vivid and remarkable visions occurred I was following my course as a student at the Paris Faculty of Medicine, preparing for examinations, daily visiting hospital wards as dresser, and attending lectures. Later, when I had taken my degree, I was engaged in the duties of my profession and in writing for the Press on scientific subjects. Neither had I ever taken opium, haschish, or other dream-producing agent. A cup of tea or coffee represents the extent of my indulgences in this direction. I mention these details in order to guard against inferences which might otherwise be drawn as to the genesis of my faculty. 

 It may, perhaps, be worthy of notice that by far the larger number of the dreams set down in this volume occurred towards dawn; sometimes even, after sunrise, during a 'second sleep. ' A condition of fasting, united possibly with some subtle magnetic or other atmospheric state, seems, therefore, to be that most open to impressions of the kind. 

This is the account given by the late Dr. Anna Kingsford of the genesisof her remarkable volume, Dreams and Dream-Stories; and certainly some ofthe stories, especially those entitled Steepside, Beyond the Sunset, andThe Village of Seers, are well worth reading, though not intrinsicallyfiner, either in motive or idea, than the general run of magazinestories. No one who had the privilege of knowing Mrs. Kingsford, who wasone of the brilliant women of our day, can doubt for a single moment thatthese tales came to her in the way she describes; but to me the result isjust a little disappointing. Perhaps, however, I expect too much. Thereis no reason whatsoever why the imagination should be finer in hours ofdreaming than in its hours of waking. Mrs. Kingsford quotes a letterwritten by Jamblichus to Agathocles, in which he says: 'The soul has atwofold life, a lower and a higher. In sleep the soul is liberated fromthe constraint of the body, and enters, as an emancipated being, on itsdivine life of intelligence. The nobler part of the mind is thus unitedby abstraction to higher natures, and becomes a participant in the wisdomand foreknowledge of the gods. . . . The night-time of the body is theday-time of the soul. ' But the great masterpieces of literature and thegreat secrets of wisdom have not been communicated in this way; and evenin Coleridge's case, though Kubla Khan is wonderful, it is not morewonderful, while it is certainly less complete, than the Ancient Mariner. 

As for the dreams themselves, which occupy the first portion of the book, their value, of course, depends chiefly on the value of the truths orpredictions which they are supposed to impart. I must confess that mostmodern mysticism seems to me to be simply a method of imparting uselessknowledge in a form that no one can understand. Allegory, parable, andvision have their high artistic uses, but their philosophical andscientific uses are very small. However, here is one of Mrs. Kingsford'sdreams. It has a pleasant quaintness about it:

 THE WONDERFUL SPECTACLES

 I was walking alone on the sea-shore. The day was singularly clear and sunny. Inland lay the most beautiful landscape ever seen; and far off were ranges of tall hills, the highest peaks of which were white with glittering snows. Along the sands by the sea came towards me a man accoutred as a postman. He gave me a letter. It was from you. It ran thus:

 'I have got hold of the earliest and most precious book extant. It was written before the world began. The text is easy enough to read; but the notes, which are very copious and numerous, are in such minute and obscure characters that I cannot make them out. I want you to get for me the spectacles which Swedenborg used to wear; not the smaller pair--those he gave to Hans Christian Andersen--but the large pair, and these seem to have got mislaid. I think they are Spinoza's make. You know, he was an optical-glass maker by profession, and the best we ever had. See if you can get them for me. '

 When I looked up after reading this letter I saw the postman hastening away across the sands, and I cried out to him, 'Stop! how am I to send the answer? Will you not wait for it?'

 He looked round, stopped, and came back to me. 

 'I have the answer here, ' he said, tapping his letter-bag, 'and I shall deliver it immediately. '

 'How can you have the answer before I have written it?' I asked. 'You are making a mistake. '

 'No, ' he said. 'In the city from which I come the replies are all written at the office, and sent out with the letters themselves. Your reply is in my bag. '

 'Let me see it, ' I said. He took another letter from his wallet, and gave it to me. I opened it, and read, in my own handwriting, this answer, addressed to you:

 'The spectacles you want can be bought in London; but you will not be able to use them at once, for they have not been worn for many years, and they sadly want cleaning. This you will not be able to do yourself in London, because it is too dark there to see well, and because your fingers are not small enough to clean them properly. Bring them here to me, and I will do it for you. '

 I gave this letter back to the postman. He smiled and nodded at me; and then I perceived, to my astonishment, that he wore a camel's-hair tunic round his waist. I had been on the point of addressing him--I know not why--as Hermes. But I now saw that he must be John the Baptist; and in my fright at having spoken to so great a Saint I awoke. 

Mr. Maitland, who edits the present volume, and who was joint-author withMrs. Kingsford of that curious book The Perfect Way, states in a footnotethat in the present instance the dreamer knew nothing of Spinoza at thetime, and was quite unaware that he was an optician; and theinterpretation of the dream, as given by him, is that the spectacles inquestion were intended to represent Mrs. Kingsford's remarkable facultyof intuitional and interpretative perception. For a spiritual messagefraught with such meaning, the mere form of this dream seems to mesomewhat ignoble, and I cannot say that I like the blending of thepostman with St. John the Baptist. However, from a psychological pointof view, these dreams are interesting, and Mrs. Kingsford's book isundoubtedly a valuable addition to the literature of the mysticism of thenineteenth century. 

* * * * *

The Romance of a Shop, by Miss Amy Levy, is a more mundane book, anddeals with the adventures of some young ladies who open a photographicstudio in Baker Street to the horror of some of their fashionablerelatives. It is so brightly and pleasantly written that the suddenintroduction of a tragedy into it seems violent and unnecessary. Itlacks the true tragic temper, and without this temper in literature allmisfortunes and miseries seem somewhat mean and ordinary. With thisexception the book is admirably done, and the style is clever and full ofquick observation. Observation is perhaps the most valuable faculty fora writer of fiction. When novelists reflect and moralise, they are, as arule, dull. But to observe life with keen vision and quick intellect, tocatch its many modes of expression, to seize upon the subtlety, orsatire, or dramatic quality of its situations, and to render life for uswith some spirit of distinction and fine selection--this, I fancy, shouldbe the aim of the modern realistic novelist. It would be, perhaps, toomuch to say that Miss Levy has distinction; this is the rarest quality inmodern literature, though not a few of its masters are modern; but shehas many other qualities which are admirable. 

* * * * *

Faithful and Unfaithful is a powerful but not very pleasing novel. However, the object of most modern fiction is not to give pleasure to theartistic instinct, but rather to portray life vividly for us, to drawattention to social anomalies, and social forms of injustice. Many ofour novelists are really pamphleteers, reformers masquerading as story-tellers, earnest sociologists seeking to mend as well as to mirror life. The heroine, or rather martyr, of Miss Margaret Lee's story is a verynoble and graciously Puritanic American girl, who is married at the ageof eighteen to a man whom she insists on regarding as a hero. Herhusband cannot live in the high rarefied atmosphere of idealism withwhich she surrounds him; her firm and fearless faith in him becomes afactor in his degradation. 'You are too good for me, ' he says to her ina finely conceived scene at the end of the book; 'we have not an idea, aninclination, or a passion in common. I'm sick and tired of seeming tolive up to a standard that is entirely beyond my reach and my desire. Wemake each other miserable! I can't pull you down, and for ten years youhave been exhausting yourself in vain efforts to raise me to your level. The thing must end!' He asks her to divorce him, but she refuses. Hethen abandons her, and availing himself of those curious facilities forbreaking the marriage-tie that prevail in the United States, succeeds indivorcing her without her consent, and without her knowledge. The bookis certainly characteristic of an age so practical and so literary asours, an age in which all social reforms have been preceded and have beenlargely influenced by fiction. Faithful and Unfaithful seems to point tosome coming change in the marriage-laws of America. 

(1) Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry. Edited and Selected byW. B. Yeats. (Walter Scott. )

(2) Helen Davenant. By Violet Fane. (Chapman and Hall. )

(3) Dreams and Dream-Stories. By Dr. Anna Kingsford. (Redway. )

(4) The Romance of a Shop. By Amy Levy. (Fisher Unwin. )

(5) Faithful and Unfaithful. By Margaret Lee. (Macmillan and Co. )

ONE OF THE BIBLES OF THE WORLD

(Pall Mall Gazette, February 12, 1889. )

The Kalevala is one of those poems that Mr. William Morris once describedas 'The Bibles of the World. ' It takes its place as a national epicbeside the Homeric poems, the Niebelunge, the Shahnameth and theMahabharata, and the admirable translation just published by Mr. JohnMartin Crawford is sure to be welcomed by all scholars and lovers ofprimitive poetry. In his very interesting preface Mr. Crawford claimsfor the Finns that they began earlier than any other European nation tocollect and preserve their ancient folklore. In the seventeenth centurywe meet men of literary tastes like Palmskold who tried to collect andinterpret the various national songs of the fen-dwellers of the North. But the Kalevala proper was collected by two great Finnish scholars ofour own century, Zacharias Topelius and Elias Lonnrot. Both werepractising physicians, and in this capacity came into frequent contactwith the people of Finland. Topelius, who collected eighty epicalfragments of the Kalevala, spent the last eleven years of his life inbed, afflicted with a fatal disease. This misfortune, however, did notdamp his enthusiasm. Mr. Crawford tells us that he used to invite thewandering Finnish merchants to his bedside and induce them to sing theirheroic poems which he copied down as soon as they were uttered, and thatwhenever he heard of a renowned Finnish minstrel he did all in his powerto bring the song-man to his house in order that he might gather newfragments of the national epic. Lonnrot travelled over the wholecountry, on horseback, in reindeer sledges and in canoes, collecting theold poems and songs from the hunters, the fishermen and the shepherds. The people gave him every assistance, and he had the good fortune to comeacross an old peasant, one of the oldest of the runolainen in the Russianprovince of Wuokinlem, who was by far the most renowned song-man of thecountry, and from him he got many of the most splendid runes of the poem. And certainly the Kalevala, as it stands, is one of the world's greatpoems. It is perhaps hardly accurate to describe it as an epic. Itlacks the central unity of a true epic in our sense of the word. It hasmany heroes beside Wainomoinen and is, properly speaking, a collection offolk-songs and ballads. Of its antiquity there is no doubt. It isthoroughly pagan from beginning to end, and even the legend of the VirginMariatta to whom the Sun tells where 'her golden babe lies hidden'--

 Yonder is thy golden infant, There thy holy babe lies sleeping Hidden to his belt in water, Hidden in the reeds and rushes--

is, according to all scholars, essentially pre-Christian in origin. Thegods are chiefly gods of air and water and forest. The highest is thesky-god Ukks who is 'The Father of the Breezes, ' 'The Shepherd of theLamb-Clouds'; the lightning is his sword, the rainbow is his bow; hisskirt sparkles with fire, his stockings are blue and his shoes crimson-coloured. The daughters of the Sun and Moon sit on the scarlet rims ofthe clouds and weave the rays of light into a gleaming web. Untarpresides over fogs and mists, and passes them through a silver sievebefore sending them to the earth. Ahto, the wave-god, lives with 'hiscold and cruel-hearted spouse, ' Wellamo, at the bottom of the sea in thechasm of the Salmon-Rocks, and possesses the priceless treasure of theSampo, the talisman of success. When the branches of the primitive oak-trees shut out the light of the sun from the Northland, Pikku-Mies (thePygmy) emerged from the sea in a suit of copper, with a copper hatchet inhis belt, and having grown to a giant's stature felled the huge oak withthe third stroke of his axe. Wirokannas is 'The Green-robed Priest ofthe Forest, ' and Tapio, who has a coat of tree-moss and a high-crownedhat of fir-leaves, is 'The Gracious God of the Woodlands. ' Otso, thebear, is the 'Honey-Paw of the Mountains, ' the 'Fur-robed Forest Friend. 'In everything, visible and invisible, there is God, a divine presence. There are three worlds, and they are all peopled with divinities. 

As regards the poem itself, it is written in trochaic eight-syllabledlines with alliteration and the part-line echo, the metre whichLongfellow adopted for Hiawatha. One of its distinguishingcharacteristics is its wonderful passion for nature and for the beauty ofnatural objects. Lemenkainen says to Tapio:

 Sable-bearded God of forests, In thy hat and coat of ermine, Robe thy trees in finest fibres, Deck thy groves in richest fabrics, Give the fir-trees shining silver, Deck with gold the slender balsams, Give the spruces copper-belting, And the pine-trees silver girdles, Give the birches golden flowers, Deck their stems with silver fretwork, This their garb in former ages When the days and nights were brighter, When the fir-trees shone like sunlight, And the birches like the moonbeams; Honey breathe throughout the forest, Settled in the glens and highlands, Spices in the meadow-borders, Oil outpouring from the lowlands. 

All handicrafts and art-work are, as in Homer, elaborately described:

 Then the smiter Ilmarinen The eternal artist-forgeman, In the furnace forged an eagle From the fire of ancient wisdom, For this giant bird of magic Forged he talons out of iron, And his beak of steel and copper; Seats himself upon the eagle, On his back between the wing-bones Thus addresses he his creature, Gives the bird of fire this order. Mighty eagle, bird of beauty, Fly thou whither I direct thee, To Tuoni's coal-black river, To the blue-depths of the Death-stream, Seize the mighty fish of Mana, Catch for me this water-monster. 

And Wainamoinen's boat-building is one of the great incidents of thepoem:

 Wainamoinen old and skilful, The eternal wonder-worker, Builds his vessel with enchantment, Builds his boat by art and magic, From the timber of the oak-tree, Forms its posts and planks and flooring. Sings a song and joins the framework; Sings a second, sets the siding; Sings a third time, sets the rowlocks; Fashions oars, and ribs, and rudder, Joins the sides and ribs together. 

 . . . . . 

 Now he decks his magic vessel, Paints the boat in blue and scarlet, Trims in gold the ship's forecastle, Decks the prow in molten silver; Sings his magic ship down gliding, On the cylinders of fir-tree; Now erects the masts of pine-wood, On each mast the sails of linen, Sails of blue, and white, and scarlet, Woven into finest fabric. 

All the characteristics of a splendid antique civilisation are mirroredin this marvellous poem, and Mr. Crawford's admirable translation shouldmake the wonderful heroes of Suomi song as familiar if not as dear to ourpeople as the heroes of the great Ionian epic. 

The Kalevala, the Epic Poem of Finland. Translated into English by JohnMartin Crawford. (G. P. Putnam's Sons. )

POETICAL SOCIALISTS

(Pall Mall Gazette, February 15, 1889. )

Mr. Stopford Brooke said some time ago that Socialism and the socialisticspirit would give our poets nobler and loftier themes for song, wouldwiden their sympathies and enlarge the horizon of their vision and wouldtouch, with the fire and fervour of a new faith, lips that had else beensilent, hearts that but for this fresh gospel had been cold. What Artgains from contemporary events is always a fascinating problem and aproblem that is not easy to solve. It is, however, certain thatSocialism starts well equipped. She has her poets and her painters, herart lecturers and her cunning designers, her powerful orators and herclever writers. If she fails it will not be for lack of expression. Ifshe succeeds her triumph will not be a triumph of mere brute force. Thefirst thing that strikes one, as one looks over the list of contributorsto Mr. Edward Carpenter's Chants of Labour, is the curious variety oftheir several occupations, the wide differences of social position thatexist between them, and the strange medley of men whom a common passionhas for the moment united. The editor is a 'Science lecturer'; he isfollowed by a draper and a porter; then we have two late Eton masters andthen two bootmakers; and these are, in their turn, succeeded by an ex-Lord Mayor of Dublin, a bookbinder, a photographer, a steel-worker and anauthoress. On one page we have a journalist, a draughtsman and a music-teacher: and on another a Civil servant, a machine fitter, a medicalstudent, a cabinet-maker and a minister of the Church of Scotland. Certainly, it is no ordinary movement that can bind together in closebrotherhood men of such dissimilar pursuits, and when we mention that Mr. William Morris is one of the singers, and that Mr. Walter Crane hasdesigned the cover and frontispiece of the book, we cannot but feel that, as we pointed out before, Socialism starts well equipped. 

As for the songs themselves, some of them, to quote from the editor'spreface, are 'purely revolutionary, others are Christian in tone; thereare some that might be called merely material in their tendency, whilemany are of a highly ideal and visionary character. ' This is, on thewhole, very promising. It shows that Socialism is not going to allowherself to be trammelled by any hard and fast creed or to be stereotypedinto an iron formula. She welcomes many and multiform natures. Sherejects none and has room for all. She has the attraction of a wonderfulpersonality and touches the heart of one and the brain of another, anddraws this man by his hatred of injustice, and his neighbour by his faithin the future, and a third, it may be, by his love of art or by his wildworship of a lost and buried past. And all of this is well. For, tomake men Socialists is nothing, but to make Socialism human is a greatthing. 

They are not of any very high literary value, these poems that have beenso dexterously set to music. They are meant to be sung, not to be read. They are rough, direct and vigorous, and the tunes are stirring andfamiliar. Indeed, almost any mob could warble them with ease. Thetranspositions that have been made are rather amusing. 'Twas inTrafalgar Square is set to the tune of 'Twas in Trafalgar's Bay; Up, YePeople! a very revolutionary song by Mr. John Gregory, boot-maker, with arefrain of

 Up, ye People! or down into your graves! Cowards ever will be slaves!

is to be sung to the tune of Rule, Britannia! the old melody of The Vicarof Bray is to accompany the new Ballade of Law and Order--which, however, is not a ballade at all--and to the air of Here's to the Maiden ofBashful Fifteen the democracy of the future is to thunder forth one ofMr. T. D. Sullivan's most powerful and pathetic lyrics. It is clear thatthe Socialists intend to carry on the musical education of the peoplesimultaneously with their education in political science and, here aselsewhere, they seem to be entirely free from any narrow bias or formalprejudice. Mendelssohn is followed by Moody and Sankey; the Wacht amRhein stands side by side with the Marseillaise; Lillibulero, a chorusfrom Norma, John Brown and an air from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony are allequally delightful to them. They sing the National Anthem in Shelley'sversion and chant William Morris's Voice of Toil to the flowing numbersof Ye Banks and Braes of Bonny Doon. Victor Hugo talks somewhere of theterrible cry of 'Le Tigre Populaire, ' but it is evident from Mr. Carpenter's book that should the Revolution ever break out in England weshall have no inarticulate roar but, rather, pleasant glees and gracefulpart-songs. The change is certainly for the better. Nero fiddled whileRome was burning--at least, inaccurate historians say he did; but it isfor the building up of an eternal city that the Socialists of our day aremaking music, and they have complete confidence in the art instincts ofthe people. 

 They say that the people are brutal-- That their instincts of beauty are dead-- Were it so, shame on those who condemn them To the desperate struggle for bread. But they lie in their throats when they say it, For the people are tender at heart, And a wellspring of beauty lies hidden Beneath their life's fever and smart, is a stanza from one of the poems in this volume, and the feelingexpressed in these words is paramount everywhere. The Reformation gainedmuch from the use of popular hymn-tunes, and the Socialists seemdetermined to gain by similar means a similar hold upon the people. However, they must not be too sanguine about the result. The walls ofThebes rose up to the sound of music, and Thebes was a very dull cityindeed. 

Chants of Labour: A Song-Book of the People. With Music. Edited byEdward Carpenter. With Designs by Walter Crane. (Swan Sonnenschein andCo. )

MR. BRANDER MATTHEWS' ESSAYS

(Pall Mall Gazette, February 27, 1889. )

'If you to have your book criticized favorably, give yourself a goodnotice in the Preface!' is the golden rule laid down for the guidance ofauthors by Mr. Brander Matthews in an amusing essay on the art of preface-writing and, true to his own theory, he announces his volume as 'the mostinteresting, the most entertaining, and the most instructive book of thedecade. ' Entertaining it certainly is in parts. The essay on Poker, forinstance, is very brightly and pleasantly written. Mr. Proctor objectedto Poker on the somewhat trivial ground that it was a form of lying, andon the more serious ground that it afforded special opportunities forcheating; and, indeed, he regarded the mere existence of the game outsidegambling dens as 'one of the most portentous phenomena of Americancivilisation. ' Mr. Brander Matthews points out, in answer to these gravecharges, that Bluffing is merely a suppressio veri and that it requires agreat deal of physical courage on the part of the player. As for thecheating, he claims that Poker affords no more opportunities for theexercise of this art than either Whist or Ecarte, though he admits thatthe proper attitude towards an opponent whose good luck is undulypersistent is that of the German-American who, finding four aces in hishand, was naturally about to bet heavily, when a sudden thought struckhim and he inquired, 'Who dole dem carts?' 'Jakey Einstein' was theanswer. 'Jakey Einstein?' he repeated, laying down his hand; 'den I passout. '

The history of the game will be found very interesting by allcard-lovers. Like most of the distinctly national products of America, it seems to have been imported from abroad and can be traced back to anItalian game in the fifteenth century. Euchre was probably acclimatisedon the Mississippi by the Canadian voyageurs, being a form of the Frenchgame of Triomphe. It was a Kentucky citizen who, desiring to give hissons a few words of solemn advice for their future guidance in life, hadthem summoned to his deathbed and said to them, 'Boys, when you go downthe river to Orleens jest you beware of a game called Yucker where thejack takes the ace;--it's unchristian!'--after which warning he lay backand died in peace. And 'it was Euchre which the two gentlemen wereplaying in a boat on the Missouri River when a bystander, shocked by thefrequency with which one of the players turned up the jack, took theliberty of warning the other player that the winner was dealing from thebottom, to which the loser, secure in his power of self-protection, answered gruffly, "Well, suppose he is--it's his deal, isn't it?"'

The chapter On the Antiquity of Jests, with its suggestion of anInternational Exhibition of Jokes, is capital. Such an exhibition, Mr. Matthews remarks, would at least dispel any lingering belief in the oldsaying that there are only thirty-eight good stories in existence andthat thirty-seven of these cannot be told before ladies; and theRetrospective Section would certainly be the constant resort of any truefolklorist. For most of the good stories of our time are reallyfolklore, myth survivals, echoes of the past. The two well-knownAmerican proverbs, 'We have had a hell of a time' and 'Let the other manwalk' are both traced back by Mr. Matthews: the first to Walpole'sletters, and the other to a story Poggio tells of an inhabitant ofPerugia who walked in melancholy because he could not pay his debts. 'Vah, stulte, ' was the advice given to him, 'leave anxiety to yourcreditors!' and even Mr. William M. Evart's brilliant repartee when hewas told that Washington once threw a dollar across the Natural Bridge inVirginia, 'In those days a dollar went so much farther than it does now!'seems to be the direct descendant of a witty remark of Foote's, though wemust say that in this case we prefer the child to the father. The essayOn the French Spoken by Those who do not Speak French is also cleverlywritten and, indeed, on every subject, except literature, Mr. Matthews iswell worth reading. 

On literature and literary subjects he is certainly 'sadly to seek. ' Theessay on The Ethics of Plagiarism, with its laborious attempt torehabilitate Mr. Rider Haggard and its foolish remarks on Poe's admirablepaper Mr. Longfellow and Other Plagiarists, is extremely dull andcommonplace and, in the elaborate comparison that he draws between Mr. Frederick Locker and Mr. Austin Dobson, the author of Pen and Ink showsthat he is quite devoid of any real critical faculty or of any fine senseof the difference between ordinary society verse and the exquisite workof a very perfect artist in poetry. We have no objection to Mr. Matthewslikening Mr. Locker to Mr. Du Maurier, and Mr. Dobson to RandolphCaldecott and Mr. Edwin Abbey. Comparisons of this kind, thoughextremely silly, do not do much harm. In fact, they mean nothing and areprobably not intended to mean anything. Upon the other hand, we reallymust protest against Mr. Matthews' efforts to confuse the poetry ofPiccadilly with the poetry of Parnassus. To tell us, for instance, thatMr. Austin Dobson's verse 'has not the condensed clearness nor theincisive vigor of Mr. Locker's' is really too bad even for Transatlanticcriticism. Nobody who lays claim to the slightest knowledge ofliterature and the forms of literature should ever bring the two namesinto conjunction. Mr. Locker has written some pleasant vers de societe, some tuneful trifles in rhyme admirably suited for ladies' albums and formagazines. But to mention Herrick and Suckling and Mr. Austin Dobson inconnection with him is absurd. He is not a poet. Mr. Dobson, upon theother hand, has produced work that is absolutely classical in itsexquisite beauty of form. Nothing more artistically perfect in its waythan the Lines to a Greek Girl has been written in our time. This littlepoem will be remembered in literature as long as Thyrsis is remembered, and Thyrsis will never be forgotten. Both have that note of distinctionthat is so rare in these days of violence, exaggeration and rhetoric. Ofcourse, to suggest, as Mr. Matthews does, that Mr. Dobson's poems belongto 'the literature of power' is ridiculous. Power is not their aim, noris it their effect. They have other qualities, and in their owndelicately limited sphere they have no contemporary rivals; they havenone even second to them. However, Mr. Matthews is quite undaunted andtries to drag poor Mr. Locker out of Piccadilly, where he was reallyquite in his element, and to set him on Parnassus where he has no rightto be and where he would not claim to be. He praises his work with therecklessness of an eloquent auctioneer. These very commonplace andslightly vulgar lines on A Human Skull:

 It may have held (to shoot some random shots) Thy brains, Eliza Fry! or Baron Byron's; The wits of Nelly Gwynne or Doctor Watts-- Two quoted bards. Two philanthropic sirens. 

 But this, I trust, is clearly understood, If man or woman, if adored or hated-- Whoever own'd this Skull was not so good Nor quite so bad as many may have stated;

are considered by him to be 'sportive and brightsome' and full of'playful humor, ' and 'two things especially are to be noted inthem--individuality and directness of expression. ' Individuality anddirectness of expression! We wonder what Mr. Matthews thinks these wordsmean. 

Unfortunate Mr. Locker with his uncouth American admirer! How he mustblush to read these heavy panegyrics! Indeed, Mr. Matthews himself hasat least one fit of remorse for his attempt to class Mr. Locker's workwith the work of Mr. Austin Dobson, but like most fits of remorse itleads to nothing. On the very next page we have the complaint that Mr. Dobson's verse has not 'the condensed clearness' and the 'incisive vigor'of Mr. Locker's. Mr. Matthews should confine himself to his cleverjournalistic articles on Euchre, Poker, bad French and old jokes. Onthese subjects he can, to use an expression of his own, 'write funny. ' He'writes funny, ' too, upon literature, but the fun is not quite soamusing. 

Pen and Ink: Papers on Subjects of More or Less Importance. By BranderMatthews. (Longmans, Green and Co. )

SOME LITERARY NOTES--III

(Woman's World, March 1889. )

Miss Nesbit has already made herself a name as a writer of graceful andcharming verse, and though her last volume, Leaves of Life, does not showany distinct advance on her former work, it still fully maintains thehigh standard already achieved, and justifies the reputation of theauthor. There are some wonderfully pretty poems in it, poems full ofquick touches of fancy, and of pleasant ripples of rhyme; and here andthere a poignant note of passion flashes across the song, as a scarletthread flashes through the shuttlerace of a loom, giving a new value tothe delicate tints, and bringing the scheme of colour to a higher andmore perfect key. In Miss Nesbit's earlier volume, the Lays and Legends, as it was called, there was an attempt to give poetic form tohumanitarian dreams and socialistic aspirations; but the poems that dealtwith these subjects were, on the whole, the least successful of thecollection; and with the quick, critical instinct of an artist, MissNesbit seems to have recognised this. In the present volume, at anyrate, such poems are rare, and these few felicitous verses give us thepoet's defence:

 A singer sings of rights and wrongs, Of world's ideals vast and bright, And feels the impotence of songs To scourge the wrong or help the right; And only writhes to feel how vain Are songs as weapons for his fight; And so he turns to love again, And sings of love for heart's delight. 

 For heart's delight the singers bind The wreath of roses round the head, And will not loose it lest they find Time victor, and the roses dead. 'Man can but sing of what he knows-- I saw the roses fresh and red!' And so they sing the deathless rose, With withered roses garlanded. 

 And some within their bosom hide Their rose of love still fresh and fair, And walk in silence, satisfied To keep its folded fragrance rare. And some--who bear a flag unfurled-- Wreathe with their rose the flag they bear, And sing their banner for the world, And for their heart the roses there. 

 Yet thus much choice in singing is; We sing the good, the true, the just, Passionate duty turned to bliss, And honour growing out of trust. Freedom we sing, and would not lose Her lightest footprint in life's dust. We sing of her because we choose, We sing of love because we must. 

Certainly Miss Nesbit is at her best when she sings of love and nature. Here she is close to her subject, and her temperament gives colour andform to the various dramatic moods that are either suggested by Natureherself or brought to Nature for interpretation. This, for instance, isvery sweet and graceful:

 When all the skies with snow were grey, And all the earth with snow was white, I wandered down a still wood way, And there I met my heart's delight Slow moving through the silent wood, The spirit of its solitude: The brown birds and the lichened tree Seemed less a part of it than she. 

 Where pheasants' feet and rabbits' feet Had marked the snow with traces small, I saw the footprints of my sweet-- The sweetest woodland thing of all. With Christmas roses in her hand, One heart-beat's space I saw her stand; And then I let her pass, and stood Lone in an empty world of wood. 

 And though by that same path I've passed Down that same woodland every day, That meeting was the first and last, And she is hopelessly away. I wonder was she really there-- Her hands, and eyes, and lips, and hair? Or was it but my dreaming sent Her image down the way I went?

 Empty the woods are where we met-- They will be empty in the spring; The cowslip and the violet Will die without her gathering. But dare I dream one radiant day Red rose-wreathed she will pass this way Across the glad and honoured grass; And then--I will not let her pass. 

And this Dedication, with its tender silver-grey notes of colour, ischarming:

 In any meadow where your feet may tread, In any garland that your love may wear, May be the flower whose hidden fragrance shed Wakes some old hope or numbs some old despair, And makes life's grief not quite so hard to bear, And makes life's joy more poignant and more dear Because of some delight dead many a year. 

 Or in some cottage garden there may be The flower whose scent is memory for you; The sturdy southern-wood, the frail sweet-pea, Bring back the swallow's cheep, the pigeon's coo, And youth, and hope, and all the dreams they knew, The evening star, the hedges grey with mist, The silent porch where Love's first kiss was kissed. 

 So in my garden may you chance to find Or royal rose or quiet meadow flower, Whose scent may be with some dear dream entwined, And give you back the ghost of some sweet hour, As lilies fragrant from an August shower, Or airs of June that over bean-fields blow, Bring back the sweetness of my long ago. 

All through the volume we find the same dexterous refining of old themes, which is indeed the best thing that our lesser singers can give us, and athing always delightful. There is no garden so well tilled but it canbear another blossom, and though the subject-matter of Miss Nesbit's bookis as the subject-matter of almost all books of poetry, she can certainlylend a new grace and a subtle sweetness to almost everything on which shewrites. 

The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems is from the clever pen of Mr. W. B. Yeats, whose charming anthology of Irish fairy-tales I had occasion tonotice in a recent number of the Woman's World. {437} It is, I believe, the first volume of poems that Mr. Yeats has published, and it iscertainly full of promise. It must be admitted that many of the poemsare too fragmentary, too incomplete. They read like stray scenes out ofunfinished plays, like things only half remembered, or, at best, butdimly seen. But the architectonic power of construction, the power tobuild up and make perfect a harmonious whole, is nearly always thelatest, as it certainly is the highest, development of the artistictemperament. It is somewhat unfair to expect it in early work. Onequality Mr. Yeats has in a marked degree, a quality that is not common inthe work of our minor poets, and is therefore all the more welcome tous--I mean the romantic temper. He is essentially Celtic, and his verse, at its best, is Celtic also. Strongly influenced by Keats, he seems tostudy how to 'load every rift with ore, ' yet is more fascinated by thebeauty of words than by the beauty of metrical music. The spirit thatdominates the whole book is perhaps more valuable than any individualpoem or particular passage, but this from The Wanderings of Oisin isworth quoting. It describes the ride to the Island of Forgetfulness:

 And the ears of the horse went sinking away in the hollow light, For, as drift from a sailor slow drowning the gleams of the world and the sun, Ceased on our hands and faces, on hazel and oak leaf, the light, And the stars were blotted above us, and the whole of the world was one;

 Till the horse gave a whinny; for cumbrous with stems of the hazel and oak, Of hollies, and hazels, and oak-trees, a valley was sloping away From his hoofs in the heavy grasses, with monstrous slumbering folk, Their mighty and naked and gleaming bodies heaped loose where they lay. 

 More comely than man may make them, inlaid with silver and gold, Were arrow and shield and war-axe, arrow and spear and blade, And dew-blanched horns, in whose hollows a child of three years old Could sleep on a couch of rushes, round and about them laid. 

And this, which deals with the old legend of the city lying under thewaters of a lake, is strange and interesting:

 The maker of the stars and worlds Sat underneath the market cross, And the old men were walking, walking, And little boys played pitch-and-toss. 

 'The props, ' said He, 'of stars and worlds Are prayers of patient men and good. ' The boys, the women, and old men, Listening, upon their shadows stood. 

 A grey professor passing cried, 'How few the mind's intemperance rule! What shallow thoughts about deep things! The world grows old and plays the fool. '

 The mayor came, leaning his left ear-- There were some talking of the poor-- And to himself cried, 'Communist!' And hurried to the guardhouse door. 

 The bishop came with open book, Whispering along the sunny path; There was some talking of man's God, His God of stupor and of wrath. 

 The bishop murmured, 'Atheist! How sinfully the wicked scoff!' And sent the old men on their way, And drove the boys and women off. 

 The place was empty now of people; A cock came by upon his toes; An old horse looked across the fence, And rubbed along the rail his nose. 

 The maker of the stars and worlds To His own house did Him betake, And on that city dropped a tear, And now that city is a lake. 

Mr. Yeats has a great deal of invention, and some of the poems in hisbook, such as Mosada, Jealousy, and The Island of Statues, are veryfinely conceived. It is impossible to doubt, after reading his presentvolume, that he will some day give us work of high import. Up to this hehas been merely trying the strings of his instrument, running over thekeys. 

* * * * *

Lady Munster's Dorinda is an exceedingly clever novel. The heroine is asort of well-born Becky Sharp, only much more beautiful than Becky, or atleast than Thackeray's portraits of her, which, however, have alwaysseemed to me rather ill-natured. I feel sure that Mrs. Rawdon Crawleywas extremely pretty, and I have never understood how it was thatThackeray could caricature with his pencil so fascinating a creation ofhis pen. In the first chapter of Lady Munster's novel we find Dorinda ata fashionable school, and the sketches of the three old ladies whopreside over the select seminary are very amusing. Dorinda is not verypopular, and grave suspicions rest upon her of having stolen a cheque. This is a startling debut for a heroine, and I was a little afraid atfirst that Dorinda, after undergoing endless humiliations, would beproved innocent in the last chapter. It was quite a relief to find thatDorinda was guilty. In fact, Dorinda is a kleptomaniac; that is to say, she is a member of the upper classes who spends her time in collectingworks of art that do not belong to her. This, however, is only one ofher accomplishments, and it does not occupy any important place in thestory till the last volume is reached. Here we find Dorinda married to aStyrian Prince, and living in the luxury for which she had always longed. Unfortunately, while staying in the house of a friend she is detectedstealing some rare enamels. Her punishment, as described by LadyMunster, is extremely severe; and when she finally commits suicide, maddened by the imprisonment to which her husband had subjected her, itis difficult not to feel a good deal of pity for her. Lady Munsterwrites a very clever, bright style, and has a wonderful faculty ofdrawing in a few sentences the most lifelike portraits of social typesand social exceptions. Sir Jasper Broke and his sister, the Duke andDuchess of Cheviotdale, Lord and Lady Glenalmond, and Lord Baltimore, areall admirably drawn. The 'novel of high life, ' as it used to be called, has of late years fallen into disrepute. Instead of duchesses inMayfair, we have philanthropic young ladies in Whitechapel; and thefashionable and brilliant young dandies, in whom Disraeli and BulwerLytton took such delight, have been entirely wiped out as heroes offiction by hardworking curates in the East End. The aim of most of ourmodern novelists seems to be, not to write good novels, but to writenovels that will do good; and I am afraid that they are under theimpression that fashionable life is not an edifying subject. They wishto reform the morals, rather than to portray the manners of their age. They have made the novel the mode of propaganda. It is possible, however, that Dorinda points to some coming change, and certainly itwould be a pity if the Muse of Fiction confined her attention entirely tothe East End. 

* * * * *

The four remarkable women whom Mrs. Walford has chosen as the subjects ofher Four Biographies from 'Blackwood' are Jane Taylor, Elizabeth Fry, Hannah More, and Mary Somerville. Perhaps it is too much to say thatJane Taylor is remarkable. In her day she was said to have been 'knownto four continents, ' and Sir Walter Scott described her as 'among thefirst women of her time'; but no one now cares to read Essays in Rhyme, or Display, though the latter is really a very clever novel and full ofcapital things. Elizabeth Fry is, of course, one of the greatpersonalities of this century, at any rate in the particular sphere towhich she devoted herself, and ranks with the many uncanonised saintswhom the world has loved, and whose memory is sweet. Mrs. Walford givesa most interesting account of her. We see her first a gay, laughing, flaxen-haired girl, 'mightily addicted to fun, ' pleased to be finelydressed and sent to the opera to see the 'Prince, ' and be seen by him;pleased to exhibit her pretty figure in a becoming scarlet riding-habit, and to be looked at with obvious homage by the young officers quarteredhard by, as she rode along the Norfolk lanes; 'dissipated' by simplyhearing their band play in the square, and made giddy by the veriesttrifle: 'an idle, flirting, worldly girl, ' to use her own words. Thencame the eventful day when 'in purple boots laced with scarlet' she wentto hear William Savery preach at the Meeting House. This was the turning-point of her life, her psychological moment, as the phrase goes. Afterit came the era of 'thees' and 'thous, ' of the drab gown and the beaverhat, of the visits to Newgate and the convict ships, of the work ofrescuing the outcast and seeking the lost. Mrs. Walford quotes thefollowing interesting account of the famous interview with QueenCharlotte at the Mansion-House:

 Inside the Egyptian Hall there was a subject for Hayter--the diminutive stature of the Queen, covered with diamonds, and her countenance lighted up with the kindest benevolence; Mrs. Fry, her simple Quaker's dress adding to the height of her figure--though a little flushed--preserving her wonted calmness of look and manner; several of the bishops standing near; the platform crowded with waving feathers, jewels, and orders; the hall lined with spectators, gaily and nobly clad, and the centre filled with hundreds of children, brought there from their different schools to be examined. A murmur of applause ran through the assemblage as the Queen took Mrs. Fry by the hand. The murmur was followed by a clap and a shout, which was taken up by the multitudes without till it died away in the distance. 

Those who regard Hannah More as a prim maiden lady of the conventionaltype, with a pious and literary turn of mind, will be obliged to changetheir views should they read Mrs. Walford's admirable sketch of theauthoress of Percy. Hannah More was a brilliant wit, a femme d'esprit, passionately fond of society, and loved by society in return. When theserious-minded little country girl, who at the age of eight had covered awhole quire of paper with letters seeking to reform imaginary depravedcharacters, and with return epistles full of contrition and promises ofamendment, paid her first visit to London, she became at once theintimate friend of Johnson, Burke, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Garrick, and mostof the distinguished people of the day, delighting them by her charm, andgrace, and wit. 'I dined at the Adelphi yesterday, ' she writes in one ofher letters. 'Garrick was the very soul of the company, and I never sawJohnson in more perfect good-humour. After all had risen to go we stoodround them for above an hour, laughing, in defiance of every rule ofdecorum and Chesterfield. I believe we should never have thought ofsitting down, nor of parting, had not an impertinent watchman beensaucily vociferating. Johnson outstaid them all, and sat with me forhalf an hour. ' The following is from her sister's pen:

 On Tuesday evening we drank tea at Sir Joshua's with Dr. Johnson. Hannah is certainly a great favourite. She was placed next him, and they had the entire conversation to themselves. They were both in remarkably high spirits, and it was certainly her lucky night; I never heard her say so many good things. The old genius was as jocular as the young one was pleasant. You would have imagined we were at some comedy had you heard our peals of laughter. They certainly tried which could 'pepper the highest, ' and it is not clear to me that the lexicographer was really the highest seasoner. 

Hannah More was certainly, as Mrs. Walford says, 'the feted and caressedidol of society. ' The theatre at Bristol vaunted, 'Boast we not a More?'and the learned cits at Oxford inscribed their acknowledgment of herauthority. Horace Walpole sat on the doorstep--or threatened to doso--till she promised to go down to Strawberry Hill; Foster quoted her;Mrs. Thrale twined her arms about her; Wilberforce consulted her andemployed her. When The Estimate of the Religion of the Fashionable Worldwas published anonymously, 'Aut Morus, aut Angelus, ' exclaimed the Bishopof London, before he had read six pages. Of her village stories andballads two million copies were sold during the first year. Caelebs inSearch of a Wife ran into thirty editions. Mrs. Barbauld writes to tellher about 'a good and sensible woman' of her acquaintance, who, on beingasked how she contrived to divert herself in the country, replied, 'Ihave my spinning-wheel and my Hannah More. When I have spun one pound offlax I put on another, and when I have finished my book I begin it again. _I want no other amusement_. ' How incredible it all sounds! No wonderthat Mrs. Walford exclaims, 'No other amusement! Good heavens! Breathesthere a man, woman, or child with soul so quiescent nowadays as to besatisfied with reels of flax and yards of Hannah More? Give us Hannah'scompany, but not--not her writings!' It is only fair to say that Mrs. Walford has thoroughly carried out the views she expresses in thispassage, for she gives us nothing of Hannah More's grandiloquent literaryproductions, and yet succeeds in making us know her thoroughly. Thewhole book is well written, but the biography of Hannah More is awonderfully brilliant sketch, and deserves great praise. 

* * * * *

Miss Mabel Wotton has invented a new form of picture-gallery. Feelingthat the visible aspect of men and women can be expressed in literatureno less than through the medium of line and colour, she has collectedtogether a series of Word Portraits of Famous Writers extending fromGeoffrey Chaucer to Mrs. Henry Wood. It is a far cry from the author ofthe Canterbury Tales to the authoress of East Lynne; but as a beauty, atany rate, Mrs. Wood deserved to be described, and we hear of the pureoval of her face, of her perfect mouth, her 'dazzling' complexion, andthe extraordinary youth by which 'she kept to the last the . . . Freshness of a young girl. ' Many of the 'famous writers' seem to havebeen very ugly. Thomson, the poet, was of a dull countenance, and agross, unanimated, uninviting appearance; Richardson looked 'like a plumpwhite mouse in a wig. ' Pope is described in the Guardian, in 1713, as 'alively little creature, with long arms and legs: a spider is no illemblem of him. He has been taken at a distance for a small windmill. 'Charles Kingsley appears as 'rather tall, very angular, surprisinglyawkward, with thin staggering legs, a hatchet face adorned with scraggygray whiskers, a faculty for falling into the most ungainly attitudes, and making the most hideous contortions of visage and frame; with a roughprovincial accent and an uncouth way of speaking which would be set downfor absurd caricature on the boards of a comic theatre. ' Lamb isdescribed by Carlyle as 'the leanest of mankind; tiny black breechesbuttoned to the knee-cap and no further, surmounting spindle legs also inblack, face and head fineish, black, bony, lean, and of a Jew typerather'; and Talfourd says that the best portrait of him is his owndescription of Braham--'a compound of the Jew, the gentleman, and theangel. ' William Godwin was 'short and stout, his clothes loosely andcarelessly put on, and usually old and worn; his hands were generally inhis pockets; he had a remarkably large, bald head, and a weak voice;seeming generally half asleep when he walked, and even when he talked. 'Lord Charlemont spoke of David Hume as more like a 'turtle-eatingalderman' than 'a refined philosopher. ' Mary Russell Mitford was ill-naturedly described by L. E. L. As 'Sancho Panza in petticoats!'; and asfor poor Rogers, who was somewhat cadaverous, the descriptions given ofhim are quite dreadful. Lord Dudley once asked him 'why, now that hecould afford it, he did not set up his hearse, ' and it is said thatSydney Smith gave him mortal offence by recommending him 'when he sat forhis portrait to be drawn saying his prayers, with his face hidden in hishands, ' christened him the 'Death dandy, ' and wrote underneath a pictureof him, 'Painted in his lifetime. ' We must console ourselves--if notwith Mr. Hardy's statement that 'ideal physical beauty is incompatiblewith mental development, and a full recognition of the evil of things'--atleast with the pictures of those who had some comeliness, and grace, andcharm. Dr. Grosart says of a miniature of Edmund Spenser, 'It is anexquisitely beautiful face. The brow is ample, the lips thin but mobile, the eyes a grayish-blue, the hair and beard a golden red (as of "redmonie" of the ballads) or goldenly chestnut, the nose withsemi-transparent nostril and keen, the chin firm-poised, the expressionrefined and delicate. Altogether just such "presentment" of the Poet ofBeauty par excellence, as one would have imagined. ' Antony Wooddescribes Sir Richard Lovelace as being, at the age of sixteen, 'the mostamiable and beautiful person that ever eye beheld. ' Nor need we wonderat this when we remember the portrait of Lovelace that hangs at DulwichCollege. Barry Cornwall, described himself by S. C. Hall as 'a decidedlyrather pretty little fellow, ' said of Keats: 'His countenance lives in mymind as one of singular beauty and brightness, --it had an expression asif he had been looking on some glorious sight. ' Chatterton and Byronwere splendidly handsome, and beauty of a high spiritual order may beclaimed both for Milton and Shelley, though an industrious gentlemanlately wrote a book in two volumes apparently for the purpose of provingthat the latter of these two poets had a snub nose. Hazlitt once saidthat 'A man's life may be a lie to himself and others, and yet a picturepainted of him by a great artist would probably stamp his character. ' Fewof the word-portraits in Miss Wotton's book can be said to have beendrawn by a great artist, but they are all interesting, and Miss Wottonhas certainly shown a wonderful amount of industry in collecting herreferences and in grouping them. It is not a book to be read throughfrom beginning to end, but it is a delightful book to glance at, and byits means one can raise the ghosts of the dead, at least as well as thePsychical Society can. 

(1) Leaves of Life. By E. Nesbit. (Longmans, Green and Co. )

(2) The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems. By W. B. Yeats. (KeganPaul. )

(3) Dorinda. By Lady Munster. (Hurst and Blackett. )

(4) Four Biographies from 'Blackwood. ' By Mrs. Walford. (Blackwood andSons. )

(5) Word Portraits of Famous Writers. Edited by Mabel Wotton. (Bentleyand Son. )

MR. WILLIAM MORRIS'S LAST BOOK

(Pall Mall Gazette, March 2, 1889. )

Mr. Morris's last book is a piece of pure art workmanship from beginningto end, and the very remoteness of its style from the common language andordinary interests of our day gives to the whole story a strange beautyand an unfamiliar charm. It is written in blended prose and verse, likethe mediaeval 'cante-fable, ' and tells the tale of the House of theWolfings in its struggles against the legionaries of Rome then advancinginto Northern Germany. It is a kind of Saga, and the language in whichthe folk-epic, as we may call it, is set forth recalls the antiquedignity and directness of our English tongue four centuries ago. From anartistic point of view it may be described as an attempt to return by aself-conscious effort to the conditions of an earlier and a fresher age. Attempts of this kind are not uncommon in the history of art. From somesuch feeling came the Pre-Raphaelite movement of our own day and thearchaistic movement of later Greek sculpture. When the result isbeautiful the method is justified, and no shrill insistence upon asupposed necessity for absolute modernity of form can prevail against thevalue of work that has the incomparable excellence of style. Certainly, Mr. Morris's work possesses this excellence. His fine harmonies and richcadences create in the reader that spirit by which alone can its ownspirit be interpreted, awake in him something of the temper of romanceand, by taking him out of his own age, place him in a truer and morevital relation to the great masterpieces of all time. It is a bad thingfor an age to be always looking in art for its own reflection. It iswell that, now and then, we are given work that is nobly imaginative inits method and purely artistic in its aim. As we read Mr. Morris's storywith its fine alternations of verse and prose, its decorative anddescriptive beauties, its wonderful handling of romantic and adventurousthemes, we cannot but feel that we are as far removed from the ignoblefiction as we are from the ignoble facts of our own day. We breathe apurer air, and have dreams of a time when life had a kind of poeticalquality of its own, and was simple and stately and complete. 

The tragic interest of The House of the Wolfings centres round the figureof Thiodolf, the great hero of the tribe. The goddess who loves himgives him, as he goes to battle against the Romans, a magical hauberk onwhich rests this strange fate: that he who wears it shall save his ownlife and destroy the life of his land. Thiodolf, finding out thissecret, brings the hauberk back to the Wood-Sun, as she is called, andchooses death for himself rather than the ruin of his cause, and so thestory ends. 

But Mr. Morris has always preferred romance to tragedy, and set thedevelopment of action above the concentration of passion. His story islike some splendid old tapestry crowded with stately images and enrichedwith delicate and delightful detail. The impression it leaves on us isnot of a single central figure dominating the whole, but rather of amagnificent design to which everything is subordinated, and by whicheverything becomes of enduring import. It is the whole presentation ofthe primitive life that really fascinates. What in other hands wouldhave been mere archaeology is here transformed by quick artistic instinctand made wonderful for us, and human and full of high interest. Theancient world seems to have come to life again for our pleasure. 

Of a work so large and so coherent, completed with no less perfectionthan it is conceived, it is difficult by mere quotation to give anyadequate idea. This, however, may serve as an example of its narrativepower. The passage describes the visit of Thiodolf to the Wood-Sun:

 The moonlight lay in a great flood on the grass without, and the dew was falling in the coldest hour of the night, and the earth smelled sweetly: the whole habitation was asleep now, and there was no sound to be known as the sound of any creature, save that from the distant meadow came the lowing of a cow that had lost her calf, and that a white owl was flitting about near the eaves of the Roof with her wild cry that sounded like the mocking of merriment now silent. Thiodolf turned toward the wood, and walked steadily through the scattered hazel-trees, and thereby into the thick of the beech-trees, whose boles grew smooth and silver-grey, high and close-set: and so on and on he went as one going by a well-known path, though there was no path, till all the moonlight was quenched under the close roof of the beech-leaves, though yet for all the darkness, no man could go there and not feel that the roof was green above him. Still he went on in despite of the darkness, till at last there was a glimmer before him, that grew greater till he came unto a small wood-lawn whereon the turf grew again, though the grass was but thin, because little sunlight got to it, so close and thick were the tall trees round about it. . . . Nought looked Thiodolf either at the heavens above, or the trees, as he strode from off the husk-strewn floor of the beech wood on to the scanty grass of the lawn, but his eyes looked straight before him at that which was amidmost of the lawn: and little wonder was that; for there on a stone chair sat a woman exceeding fair, clad in glittering raiment, her hair lying as pale in the moonlight on the grey stone as the barley acres in the August night before the reaping-hook goes in amongst them. She sat there as though she were awaiting some one, and he made no stop nor stay, but went straight up to her, and took her in his arms, and kissed her mouth and her eyes, and she him again; and then he sat himself down beside her. 

As an example of the beauty of the verse we would take this from the songof the Wood-Sun. It at least shows how perfectly the poetry harmoniseswith the prose, and how natural the transition is from the one to theother:

 In many a stead Doom dwelleth, nor sleepeth day nor night: The rim of the bowl she kisseth, and beareth the chambering light When the kings of men wend happy to the bride-bed from the board. It is little to say that she wendeth the edge of the grinded sword, When about the house half builded she hangeth many a day; The ship from the strand she shoveth, and on his wonted way By the mountain hunter fareth where his foot ne'er failed before: She is where the high bank crumbles at last on the river's shore: The mower's scythe she whetteth; and lulleth the shepherd to sleep Where the deadly ling-worm wakeneth in the desert of the sheep. Now we that come of the God-kin of her redes for ourselves we wot, But her will with the lives of men-folk and their ending know we not. So therefore I bid thee not fear for thyself of Doom and her deed, But for me: and I bid thee hearken to the helping of my need. Or else--Art thou happy in life, or lusteth thou to die In the flower of thy days, when thy glory and thy longing bloom on high?

The last chapter of the book in which we are told of the great feast madefor the dead is so finely written that we cannot refrain from quotingthis passage:

 Now was the glooming falling upon the earth; but the Hall was bright within even as the Hall-Sun had promised. Therein was set forth the Treasure of the Wolfings; fair cloths were hung on the walls, goodly broidered garments on the pillars: goodly brazen cauldrons and fair- carven chests were set down in nooks where men could see them well, and vessels of gold and silver were set all up and down the tables of the feast. The pillars also were wreathed with flowers, and flowers hung garlanded from the walls over the precious hangings; sweet gums and spices were burning in fair-wrought censers of brass, and so many candles were alight under the Roof, that scarce had it looked more ablaze when the Romans had litten the faggots therein for its burning amidst the hurry of the Morning Battle. 

 There then they fell to feasting, hallowing in the high-tide of their return with victory in their hands: and the dead corpses of Thiodolf and Otter, clad in precious glittering raiment, looked down on them from the High-seat, and the kindreds worshipped them and were glad; and they drank the Cup to them before any others, were they Gods or men. 

In days of uncouth realism and unimaginative imitation, it is a highpleasure to welcome work of this kind. It is a work in which all loversof literature cannot fail to delight. 

A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and all the Kindreds of the Mark. Written in Prose and in Verse by William Morris. (Reeves and Turner. )

ADAM LINDSAY GORDON

(Pall Mall Gazette, March 25, 1889. )

A critic recently remarked of Adam Lindsay Gordon that through himAustralia had found her first fine utterance in song. {452} This, however, is an amiable error. There is very little of Australia inGordon's poetry. His heart and mind and fancy were always preoccupiedwith memories and dreams of England and such culture as England gave him. He owed nothing to the land of his adoption. Had he stayed at home hewould have done much better work. In a few poems such as The SickStockrider, From the Wreck, and Wolf and Hound there are notes ofAustralian influences, and these Swinburnian stanzas from the dedicationto the Bush Ballads deserve to be quoted, though the promise they holdout was never fulfilled:

 They are rhymes rudely strung with intent less Of sound than of words, In lands where bright blossoms are scentless, And songless bright birds; Where, with fire and fierce drought on her tresses, Insatiable summer oppresses Sere woodlands and sad wildernesses, And faint flocks and herds. 

 Whence gather'd?--The locust's grand chirrup May furnish a stave; The ring of a rowel and stirrup, The wash of a wave. The chaunt of the marsh frog in rushes, That chimes through the pauses and hushes Of nightfall, the torrent that gushes, The tempests that rave. 

 In the gathering of night gloom o'erhead, in The still silent change, All fire-flushed when forest trees redden On slopes of the range. When the gnarl'd, knotted trunks Eucalyptian Seem carved, like weird columns Egyptian, With curious device--quaint inscription, And hieroglyph strange;

 In the Spring, when the wattle gold trembles 'Twixt shadow and shine, When each dew-laden air draught resembles A long draught of wine; When the sky-line's blue burnish'd resistance Makes deeper the dreamiest distance, Some song in all hearts hath existence, -- Such songs have been mine. 

As a rule, however, Gordon is distinctly English, and the landscapes hedescribes are always the landscapes of our own country. He writes aboutmediaeval lords and ladies in his Rhyme of Joyous Garde, about Cavaliersand Roundheads in The Romance of Britomarte, and Ashtaroth, his longestand most ambitious poem, deals with the adventures of the Norman baronsand Danish knights of ancient days. Steeped in Swinburne and bewilderedwith Browning, he set himself to reproduce the marvellous melody of theone and the dramatic vigour and harsh strength of the other. From theWreck is a sort of Australian edition of the Ride to Ghent. These arethe first three stanzas of one of the so-called Bush Ballads:

 On skies still and starlit White lustres take hold, And grey flashes scarlet, And red flashes gold. And sun-glories cover The rose, shed above her, Like lover and lover They flame and unfold. 

 . . . . . 

 Still bloom in the garden Green grass-plot, fresh lawn, Though pasture lands harden And drought fissures yawn. While leaves, not a few fall, Let rose-leaves for you fall, Leaves pearl-strung with dewfall, And gold shot with dawn. 

 Does the grass-plot remember The fall of your feet In Autumn's red ember When drought leagues with heat, When the last of the roses Despairingly closes In the lull that reposes Ere storm winds wax fleet?

And the following verses show that the Norman Baron of Ashtaroth had readDolores just once too often:

 Dead priests of Osiris, and Isis, And Apis! that mystical lore, Like a nightmare, conceived in a crisis Of fever, is studied no more; Dead Magian! yon star-troop that spangles The arch of yon firmament vast Looks calm, like a host of white angels On dry dust of votaries past. 

 On seas unexplored can the ship shun Sunk rocks? Can man fathom life's links, Past or future, unsolved by Egyptian Or Theban, unspoken by Sphynx? The riddle remains yet, unravell'd By students consuming night oil. O earth! we have toil'd, we have travailed: How long shall we travail and toil?

By the classics Gordon was always very much fascinated. He loved what hecalls 'the scroll that is godlike and Greek, ' though he is ratheruncertain about his quantities, rhyming 'Polyxena' to 'Athena' and'Aphrodite' to 'light, ' and occasionally makes very rash statements, aswhen he represents Leonidas exclaiming to the three hundred atThermopylae:

 'Ho! comrades let us gaily dine-- This night with Plato we shall sup, '

if this be not, as we hope it is, a printer's error. What theAustralians liked best were his spirited, if somewhat rough, horse-racingand hunting poems. Indeed, it was not till he found that How We Beat theFavourite was on everybody's lips that he consented to forego hisanonymity and appear in the unsuspected character of a verse-writer, having up to that time produced his poems shyly, scribbled them on scrapsof paper, and sent them unsigned to the local magazines. The fact isthat the social atmosphere of Melbourne was not favourable to poets, andthe worthy colonials seem to have shared Audrey's doubts as to whetherpoetry was a true and honest thing. It was not till Gordon won the CupSteeplechase for Major Baker in 1868 that he became really popular, andprobably there were many who felt that to steer Babbler to the winning-post was a finer achievement than 'to babble o'er green fields. '

On the whole, it is impossible not to regret that Gordon ever emigrated. His literary power cannot be denied, but it was stunted in uncongenialsurroundings and marred by the rude life he was forced to lead. Australiahas converted many of our failures into prosperous and admirablemediocrities, but she certainly spoiled one of our poets for us. Ovid atTomi is not more tragic than Gordon driving cattle or farming anunprofitable sheep-ranch. 

That Australia, however, will some day make amends by producing a poet ofher own we cannot doubt, and for him there will be new notes to sound andnew wonders to tell of. The description, given by Mr. Marcus Clarke inthe preface to this volume, of the aspect and spirit of Nature inAustralia is most curious and suggestive. The Australian forests, hetells us, are funereal and stern, and 'seem to stifle, in their blackgorges, a story of sullen despair. ' No leaves fall from the trees, but'from the melancholy gum strips of white bark hang and rustle. Greatgrey kangaroos hop noiselessly over the coarse grass. Flights ofcockatoos stream out, shrieking like evil souls. The sun suddenly sinksand the mopokes burst out into horrible peals of semi-human laughter. 'The aborigines aver that, when night comes, from the bottomless depth ofsome lagoon a misshapen monster rises, dragging his loathsome lengthalong the ooze. From a corner of the silent forest rises a dismal chant, and around a fire dance natives painted like skeletons. All isfear-inspiring and gloomy. No bright fancies are linked with thememories of the mountains. Hopeless explorers have named them out oftheir sufferings--Mount Misery, Mount Dreadful, Mount Despair. 

 In Australia alone (says Mr. Clarke) is to be found the Grotesque, the Weird, the strange scribblings of nature learning how to write. But the dweller in the wilderness acknowledges the subtle charm of the fantastic land of monstrosities. He becomes familiar with the beauty of loneliness. Whispered to by the myriad tongues of the wilderness, he learns the language of the barren and the uncouth, and can read the hieroglyphs of haggard gum-trees, blown into odd shapes, distorted with fierce hot winds, or cramped with cold nights, when the Southern Cross freezes in a cloudless sky of icy blue. The phantasmagoria of that wild dream-land termed the Bush interprets itself, and the Poet of our desolation begins to comprehend why free Esau loved his heritage of desert sand better than all the bountiful richness of Egypt. 

Here, certainly, is new material for the poet, here is a land that iswaiting for its singer. Such a singer Gordon was not. He remainedthoroughly English, and the best that we can say of him is that he wroteimperfectly in Australia those poems that in England he might have madeperfect. 

Poems. By Adam Lindsay Gordon. (Samuel Mullen. )

THE POETS' CORNER--IX

(Pall Mall Gazette, March 30, 1889. )

Judges, like the criminal classes, have their lighter moments, and it wasprobably in one of his happiest and, certainly, in one of his mostcareless moods that Mr. Justice Denman conceived the idea of putting theearly history of Rome into doggerel verse for the benefit of a little boyof the name of Jack. Poor Jack! He is still, we learn from the preface, under six years of age, and it is sad to think of the future career of aboy who is being brought up on bad history and worse poetry. Here is apassage from the learned judge's account of Romulus:

 Poor Tatius by some unknown hand Was soon assassinated, Some said by Romulus' command; I know not--but 'twas fated. 

 Sole King again, this Romulus Play'd some fantastic tricks, Lictors he had, who hatchets bore Bound up with rods of sticks. 

 He treated all who thwarted him No better than a dog, Sometimes 'twas 'Heads off, Lictors, there!' Sometimes 'Ho! Lictors, flog!'

 Then he created Senators, And gave them rings of gold; Old soldiers all; their name deriv'd From 'Senex' which means 'old. '

 Knights, too, he made, good horsemen all, Who always were at hand To execute immediately Whate'er he might command. 

 But these were of Patrician rank, Plebeians all the rest; Remember this distinction, Jack! For 'tis a useful test. 

The reign of Tullius Hostilius opens with a very wicked rhyme:

 As Numa, dying, only left A daughter, named Pompilia, The Senate had to choose a King. They choose one sadly _sillier_. 

If Jack goes to the bad, Mr. Justice Denman will have much to answer for. 

After such a terrible example from the Bench, it is pleasant to turn tothe seats reserved for Queen's Counsel. Mr. Cooper Willis's Tales andLegends, if somewhat boisterous in manner, is still very spirited andclever. The Prison of the Danes is not at all a bad poem, and there is agreat deal of eloquent, strong writing in the passage beginning:

 The dying star-song of the night sinks in the dawning day, And the dark-blue sheen is changed to green, and the green fades into grey, And the sleepers are roused from their slumbers, and at last the Danesmen know How few of all their numbers are left them by the foe. 

Not much can be said of a poet who exclaims:

 Oh, for the power of Byron or of Moore, To glow with one, and with the latter soar. 

And yet Mr. Moodie is one of the best of those South African poets whoseworks have been collected and arranged by Mr. Wilmot. Pringle, the'father of South African verse, ' comes first, of course, and his bestpoem is, undoubtedly, Afar in the Desert:

 Afar in the desert I love to ride, With the silent Bush-boy alone by my side: Away, away, from the dwelling of men By the wild-deer's haunt, by the buffalo's glen: By valleys remote where the oribi plays, Where the gnu, the gazelle and the hartebeest graze, And the kudu and eland unhunted recline By the skirts of grey forests o'erhung with wild vine, Where the elephant browses at peace in his wood, And the river-horse gambols unscared in the flood, And the mighty rhinoceros wallows at will In the fen where the wild ass is drinking his fill. 

It is not, however, a very remarkable production. 

The Smouse, by Fannin, has the modern merit of incomprehensibility. Itreads like something out of The Hunting of the Snark:

 I'm a Smouse, I'm a Smouse in the wilderness wide, The veld is my home, and the wagon's my pride: The crack of my 'voerslag' shall sound o'er the lea, I'm a Smouse, I'm a Smouse, and the trader is free! I heed not the Governor, I fear not his law, I care not for civilisation one straw, And ne'er to 'Ompanda'--'Umgazis' I'll throw While my arm carries fist, or my foot bears a toe! 'Trek, ' 'trek, ' ply the whip--touch the fore oxen's skin, I'll warrant we'll 'go it' through thick and through thin-- Loop! loop ye oud skellums! ot Vikmaan trek jy; I'm a Smouse, I'm a Smouse, and the trader is free!

The South African poets, as a class, are rather behind the age. Theyseem to think that 'Aurora' is a very novel and delightful epithet forthe dawn. On the whole they depress us. 

Chess, by Mr. Louis Tylor, is a sort of Christmas masque in which thedramatis personae consist of some unmusical carollers, a priggish youngman called Eric, and the chessmen off the board. The White Queen'sKnight begins a ballad and the Black King's Bishop completes it. ThePawns sing in chorus and the Castles converse with each other. Thesilliness of the form makes it an absolutely unreadable book. 

Mr. Williamson's Poems of Nature and Life are as orthodox in spirit asthey are commonplace in form. A few harmless heresies of art and thoughtwould do this poet no harm. Nearly everything that he says has been saidbefore and said better. The only original thing in the volume is thedescription of Mr. Robert Buchanan's 'grandeur of mind. ' This isdecidedly new. 

Dr. Cockle tells us that Mullner's Guilt and The Ancestress ofGrillparzer are the masterpieces of German fate-tragedy. His translationof the first of these two masterpieces does not make us long for anyfurther acquaintance with the school. Here is a specimen from the fourthact of the fate-tragedy. 

 SCENE VIII. 

 ELVIRA. HUGO. 

 ELVIRA (after long silence, leaving the harp, steps to Hugo, and seeks his gaze). 

 HUGO (softly). Though I made sacrifice of thy sweet life. The Father has forgiven. Can the wife--Forgive?

 ELVIRA (on his breast). She can!

 HUGO (with all the warmth of love). Dear wife!

 ELVIRA (after a pause, in deep sorrow). Must it be so, beloved one?

 HUGO (sorry to have betrayed himself). What?

In his preface to The Circle of Seasons, a series of hymns and verses forthe seasons of the Church, the Rev. T. B. Dover expresses a hope thatthis well-meaning if somewhat tedious book 'may be of value to those manyearnest people to whom the subjective aspect of truth is helpful. ' Thepoem beginning

 Lord, in the inn of my poor worthless heart Guests come and go; but there is room for Thee, has some merit and might be converted into a good sonnet. The majorityof the poems, however, are quite worthless. There seems to be somecurious connection between piety and poor rhymes. 

Lord Henry Somerset's verse is not so good as his music. Most of theSongs of Adieu are marred by their excessive sentimentality of feelingand by the commonplace character of their weak and lax form. There isnothing that is new and little that is true in verse of this kind:

 The golden leaves are falling, Falling one by one, Their tender 'Adieux' calling To the cold autumnal sun. The trees in the keen and frosty air Stand out against the sky, 'Twould seem they stretch their branches bare To Heaven in agony. 

It can be produced in any quantity. Lord Henry Somerset has too muchheart and too little art to make a good poet, and such art as he doespossess is devoid of almost every intellectual quality and entirelylacking in any intellectual strength. He has nothing to say and says it. 

Mrs. Cora M. Davis is eloquent about the splendours of what the authoressof The Circle of Seasons calls 'this earthly ball. '

 Let's sing the beauties of this grand old earth, she cries, and proceeds to tell how

 Imagination paints old Egypt's former glory, Of mighty temples reaching heavenward, Of grim, colossal statues, whose barbaric story The caustic pens of erudition still record, Whose ancient cities of glittering minarets Reflect the gold of Afric's gorgeous sunsets. 

'The caustic pens of erudition' is quite delightful and will beappreciated by all Egyptologists. There is also a charming passage inthe same poem on the pictures of the Old Masters:

 the mellow richness of whose tints impart, By contrast, greater delicacy still to modern art. 

This seems to us the highest form of optimism we have ever come across inart criticism. It is American in origin, Mrs. Davis, as her biographertells us, having been born in Alabama, Genesee co. , N. Y. 

(1) The Story of the Kings of Rome in Verse. By the Hon. G. Denman, Judge of the High Court of Justice. (Trubner and Co. )

(2) Tales and Legends in Verse. By E. Cooper Willis, Q. C. (Kegan Paul. )

(3) The Poetry of South Africa. Collected and arranged by A. Wilmot. (Sampson Low and Co. )

(4) Chess. A Christmas Masque. By Louis Tylor. (Fisher Unwin. )

(5) Poems of Nature and Life. By David R. Williamson. (Blackwood. )

(6) Guilt. Translated from the German by J. Cockle, M. D. (Williams andNorgate. )

(7) The Circle of Seasons. By K. E. V. (Elliot Stock. )

(8) Songs of Adieu. By Lord Henry Somerset. (Chatto and Windus. )

(9) Immortelles. By Cora M. Davis. (G. P. Putnam's Sons. )

SOME LITERARY NOTES--IV

(Woman's World, April 1889. )

'In modern life, ' said Matthew Arnold once, 'you I cannot well enter amonastery; but you can enter the Wordsworth Society. ' I fear that thiswill sound to many a somewhat uninviting description of this admirableand useful body, whose papers and productions have been recentlypublished by Professor Knight, under the title of Wordsworthiana. 'Plainliving and high thinking' are not popular ideals. Most people prefer tolive in luxury, and to think with the majority. However, there is reallynothing in the essays and addresses of the Wordsworth Society that needcause the public any unnecessary alarm; and it is gratifying to notethat, although the society is still in the first blush of enthusiasm, ithas not yet insisted upon our admiring Wordsworth's inferior work. Itpraises what is worthy of praise, reverences what should be reverenced, and explains what does not require explanation. One paper is quitedelightful; it is from the pen of Mr. Rawnsley, and deals with suchreminiscences of Wordsworth as still linger among the peasantry ofWestmoreland. Mr. Rawnsley grew up, he tells us, in the immediatevicinity of the present Poet-Laureate's old home in Lincolnshire, and hadbeen struck with the swiftness with which, As year by year the labourer tills His wonted glebe, or lops the glades, the memories of the poet of the Somersby Wold had 'faded from off thecircle of the hills'--had, indeed, been astonished to note how littlereal interest was taken in him or his fame, and how seldom his works weremet with in the houses of the rich or poor in the very neighbourhood. Accordingly, when he came to reside in the Lake Country, he endeavouredto find out what of Wordsworth's memory among the men of the Dales stilllingered on--how far he was still a moving presence among them--how farhis works had made their way into the cottages and farmhouses of thevalleys. He also tried to discover how far the race of Westmoreland andCumberland farm-folk--the 'Matthews' and the 'Michaels' of the poet, asdescribed by him--were real or fancy pictures, or how far the charactersof the Dalesmen had been altered in any remarkable manner by touristinfluences during the thirty-two years that have passed since the Lakepoet was laid to rest. 

With regard to the latter point, it will be remembered that Mr. Ruskin, writing in 1876, said that 'the Border peasantry, painted with absolutefidelity by Scott and Wordsworth, ' are, as hitherto, a scarcely injuredrace; that in his fields at Coniston he had men who might have foughtwith Henry V. At Agincourt without being distinguished from any of hisknights; that he could take his tradesmen's word for a thousand pounds, and need never latch his garden gate; and that he did not fearmolestation, in wood or on moor, for his girl guests. Mr. Rawnsley, however, found that a certain beauty had vanished which the simpleretirement of old valley days fifty years ago gave to the men among whomWordsworth lived. 'The strangers, ' he says, 'with their gifts of gold, their vulgarity, and their requirements, have much to answer for. ' Asfor their impressions of Wordsworth, to understand them one mustunderstand the vernacular of the Lake District. 'What was Mr. Wordsworthlike in personal appearance?' said Mr. Rawnsley once to an old retainer, who still lives not far from Rydal Mount. 'He was a ugly-faaced man, anda mean liver, ' was the answer; but all that was really meant was that hewas a man of marked features, and led a very simple life in matters offood and raiment. Another old man, who believed that Wordsworth 'gotmost of his poetry out of Hartley, ' spoke of the poet's wife as 'a veryonpleasant woman, very onpleasant indeed. A close-fisted woman, that'swhat she was. ' This, however, seems to have been merely a tribute toMrs. Wordsworth's admirable housekeeping qualities. 

The first person interviewed by Mr. Rawnsley was an old lady who had beenonce in service at Rydal Mount, and was, in 1870, a lodging-house keeperat Grasmere. She was not a very imaginative person, as may be gatheredfrom the following anecdote:--Mr. Rawnsley's sister came in from a lateevening walk, and said, 'O Mrs. D---, have you seen the wonderfulsunset?' The good lady turned sharply round and, drawing herself to herfull height, as if mortally offended, answered: 'No, miss; I'm a tidycook, I know, and "they say" a decentish body for a landlady, but I don'tknaw nothing about sunsets or them sort of things, they've never been inmy line. ' Her reminiscence of Wordsworth was as worthy of tradition asit was explanatory, from her point of view, of the method in whichWordsworth composed, and was helped in his labours by his enthusiasticsister. 'Well, you know, ' she said, 'Mr. Wordsworth went humming andbooing about, and she, Miss Dorothy, kept close behint him, and shepicked up the bits as he let 'em fall, and tak' 'em down, and put 'emtogether on paper for him. And you may be very well sure as how shedidn't understand nor make sense out of 'em, and I doubt that he didn'tknow much about them either himself, but, howivver, there's a great manyfolk as do, I dare say. ' Of Wordsworth's habit of talking to himself, and composing aloud, we hear a great deal. 'Was Mr. Wordsworth asociable man?' asked Mr. Rawnsley of a Rydal farmer. 'Wudsworth, for a'he had noa pride nor nowt, ' was the answer, 'was a man who was quite oneto hissel, ye kna. He was not a man as folks could crack wi', nor not aman as could crack wi' folks. But there was another thing as kep' folkoff, he had a ter'ble girt deep voice, and ye might see his faace agaanfor long enuff. I've knoan folks, village lads and lasses, coming overby old road above, which runs from Grasmere to Rydal, flayt a'most todeath there by Wishing Gaate to hear the girt voice a groanin' andmutterin' and thunderin' of a still evening. And he had a way ofstandin' quite still by the rock there in t' path under Rydal, and folkscould hear sounds like a wild beast coming from the rocks, and childerwere scared fit to be dead a'most. '

Wordsworth's description of himself constantly recurs to one:

 And who is he with modest looks, And clad in sober russet gown? He murmurs by the running brooks, A music sweeter than their own; He is retired as noontide dew, Or fountain in a noonday grove. 

But the corroboration comes in strange guise. Mr. Rawnsley asked one ofthe Dalesmen about Wordsworth's dress and habits. This was the reply:'Wudsworth wore a Jem Crow, never seed him in a boxer in my life, --a JemCrow and an old blue cloak was his rig, and _as for his habits, he hadnoan_; niver knew him with a pot i' his hand, or a pipe i' his mouth. Buthe was a great skater, for a' that--noan better in these parts--why, hecould cut his own naame upo' the ice, could Mr. Wudsworth. ' Skatingseems to have been Wordsworth's one form of amusement. He was 'overfeckless i' his hands'--could not drive or ride--'not a bit of fish inhim, ' and 'nowt of a mountaineer. ' But he could skate. The rapture ofthe time when, as a boy, on Esthwaite's frozen lake, he had

 wheeled about, Proud and exulting like an untired horse That cares not for his home, and, shod with steel, Had hissed along the polished ice, was continued, Mr. Rawnsley tells us, into manhood's later day; and Mr. Rawnsley found many proofs that the skill the poet had gained, when

 Not seldom from the uproar he retired, Into a silent bay, or sportively Glanced sideway, leaving the tumultuous throng To cut across the reflex of a star, was of such a kind as to astonish the natives among whom he dwelt. Therecollection of a fall he once had, when his skate caught on a stone, still lingers in the district. A boy had been sent to sweep the snowfrom the White Moss Tarn for him. 'Did Mr. Wudsworth gie ye owt?' he wasasked, when he returned from his labour. 'Na, but I seed him tumlle, though!' was the answer. 'He was a ter'ble girt skater, was Wudsworthnow, ' says one of Mr. Rawnsley's informants; 'he would put one hand i'his breast (he wore a frill shirt i' them days), and t'other hand i' hiswaistband, same as shepherds does to keep their hands warm, and he wouldstand up straight and sway and swing away grandly. '

Of his poetry they did not think much, and whatever was good in it theyascribed to his wife, his sister, and Hartley Coleridge. He wrotepoetry, they said, 'because he couldn't help it--because it was hishobby'--for sheer love, and not for money. They could not understand hisdoing work 'for nowt, ' and held his occupation in somewhat light esteembecause it did not bring in 'a deal o' brass to the pocket. ' 'Did youever read his poetry, or see any books about in the farmhouses?' askedMr. Rawnsley. The answer was curious: 'Ay, ay, time or two. But ya'reweel aware there's potry and potry. There's potry wi' a li'le bitpleasant in it, and potry sic as a man can laugh at or the childerunderstand, and some as takes a deal of mastery to make out what's said, and a deal of Wudsworth's was this sort, ye kna. You could tell fra theman's faace his potry would niver have no laugh in it. His potry wasquite different work from li'le Hartley. Hartley 'ud goa running alongbeside o' the brooks and mak his, and goa in the first oppen door andwrite what he had got upo' paper. But Wudsworth's potry was real hardstuff, and bided a deal of makking, and he'd keep it in his head for longenough. Eh, but it's queer, mon, different ways folks hes of makingpotry now . . . Not but what Mr. Wudsworth didn't stand very high, andwas a well-spoken man enough. ' The best criticism on Wordsworth that Mr. Rawnsley heard was this: 'He was an open-air man, and a great critic oftrees. '

There are many useful and well-written essays in Professor Knight'svolume, but Mr. Rawnsley's is far the most interesting of all. It givesus a graphic picture of the poet as he appeared in outward semblance andmanner to those about whom he wrote. 

* * * * *

Mary Myles is Mrs. Edmonds's first attempt at writing fiction. Mrs. Edmonds is well known as an authority on modern Greek literature, and herstyle has often a very pleasant literary flavour, though in her dialoguesshe has not as yet quite grasped the difference between la langue parleeand la langue ecrite. Her heroine is a sort of Nausicaa from Girton, whodevelops into the Pallas Athena of a provincial school. She has her love-romance, like her Homeric prototype, and her Odysseus returns to her atthe close of the book. It is a nice story. 

* * * * *

Lady Dilke's Art in the Modern State is a book that cannot fail tointerest deeply every one who cares either for art or for history. The'modern State' which gives its title to the book is that political andsocial organisation of our day that comes to us from the France ofRichelieu and Colbert, and is the direct outcome of the 'Grand Siecle, 'the true greatness of which century, as Lady Dilke points out, consistsnot in its vain wars, and formal stage and stilted eloquence, and pompouspalaces, but in the formation and working out of the political and socialsystem of which these things were the first-fruits. To the question thatnaturally rises on one's lips, 'How can one dwell on the art of theseventeenth century?--it has no charm, ' Lady Dilke answers that this artpresents in its organisation, from the point of view of social polity, problems of the highest intellectual interest. Throughout all itsphases--to quote her own words--'the life of France wears, during theseventeenth century, a political aspect. The explanation of all changesin the social system, in letters, in the arts, in fashions even, has tobe sought in the necessities of the political position; and the seemingcaprices of taste take their rise from the same causes which went todetermine the making of a treaty or the promulgation of an edict. Thisseems all the stranger because, in times preceding, letters and the arts, at least, appeared to flourish in conditions as far removed from theaction of statecraft as if they had been a growth of fairyland. In theMiddle Ages they were devoted to a virgin image of Virtue; they framed, in the shade of the sanctuary, an ideal shining with the beauty born ofself-renunciation, of resignation to self-enforced conditions of moraland physical suffering. By the queenly Venus of the Renaissance theywere consecrated to the joys of life, and the world saw that throughtheir perfect use men might renew their strength, and behold virtue andbeauty with clear eyes. It was, however, reserved for the rulers ofFrance in the seventeenth century fully to realise the political functionof letters and the arts in the modern State, and their immense importancein connection with the prosperity of a commercial nation. '

The whole subject is certainly extremely fascinating. The Renaissancehad for its object the development of great personalities. The perfectfreedom of the temperament in matters of art, the perfect freedom of theintellect in intellectual matters, the full development of theindividual, were the things it aimed at. As we study its history we findit full of great anarchies. It solved no political or social problems;it did not seek to solve them. The ideal of the 'Grand Siecle, ' and ofRichelieu, in whom the forces of that great age were incarnate, wasdifferent. The ideas of citizenship, of the building up of a greatnation, of the centralisation of forces, of collective action, of ethnicunity of purpose, came before the world. It was inevitable that theyshould have done so, and Lady Dilke, with her keen historic sense and herwonderful power of grouping facts, has told us the story of theirstruggle and their victory. Her book is, from every point of view, amost remarkable work. Her style is almost French in its clearness, itssobriety, its fine and, at times, ascetic simplicity. The whole ground-plan and intellectual-conception is admirable. 

It is, of course, easy to see how much Art lost by having a new missionforced upon her. The creation of a formal tradition upon classical linesis never without its danger, and it is sad to find the provincial townsof France, once so varied and individual in artistic expression, writingto Paris for designs and advice. And yet, through Colbert's greatcentralising scheme of State supervision and State aid, France was theone country in Europe, and has remained the one country in Europe, wherethe arts are not divorced from industry. The Academy of Painting andSculpture and the School of Architecture were not, to quote Lady Dilke'swords, called into being in order that royal palaces should be raisedsurpassing all others in magnificence:

 Bievrebache and the Savonnerie were not established only that such palaces should be furnished more sumptuously than those of an Eastern fairy-tale. Colbert did not care chiefly to inquire, when organising art administration, what were the institutions best fitted to foster the proper interests of art; he asked, in the first place, what would most contribute to swell the national importance. Even so, in surrounding the King with the treasures of luxury, his object was twofold--their possession should, indeed, illustrate the Crown, but should also be a unique source of advantage to the people. Glass-workers were brought from Venice, and lace-makers from Flanders, that they might yield to France the secrets of their skill. Palaces and public buildings were to afford commissions for French artists, and a means of technical and artistic education for all those employed upon them. The royal collections were but a further instrument in educating the taste and increasing the knowledge of the working classes. The costly factories of the Savonnerie and the Gobelins were practical schools, in which every detail of every branch of all those industries which contribute to the furnishing and decoration of houses were brought to perfection; whilst a band of chosen apprentices were trained in the adjoining schools. To Colbert is due the honour of having foreseen, not only that the interests of the modern State were inseparably bound up with those of industry, but also that the interests of industry could not, without prejudice, be divorced from art. 

Mr. Bret Harte has never written anything finer than Cressy. It is oneof his most brilliant and masterly productions, and will take rank withthe best of his Californian stories. Hawthorne re-created for us theAmerica of the past with the incomparable grace of a very perfect artist, but Mr. Bret Harte's emphasised modernity has, in its own sphere, wonequal, or almost equal, triumphs. Wit, pathos, humour, realism, exaggeration, and romance are in this marvellous story all blendedtogether, and out of the very clash and chaos of these things comes lifeitself. And what a curious life it is, half civilised and halfbarbarous, naive and corrupt, chivalrous and commonplace, real andimprobable! Cressy herself is the most tantalising of heroines. She isalways eluding one's grasp. It is difficult to say whether shesacrifices herself on the altar of romance, or is merely a girl with anextraordinary sense of humour. She is intangible, and the more we knowof her, the more incomprehensible she becomes. It is pleasant to comeacross a heroine who is not identified with any great cause, andrepresents no important principle, but is simply a wonderful nymph fromAmerican backwoods, who has in her something of Artemis, and not a littleof Aphrodite. 

* * * * *

It is always a pleasure to come across an American poet who is notnational, and who tries to give expression to the literature that heloves rather than to the land in which he lives. The Muses care solittle for geography! Mr. Richard Day's Poems have nothing distinctivelyAmerican about them. Here and there in his verse one comes across aflower that does not bloom in our meadows, a bird to which our woodlandshave never listened. But the spirit that animates the verse is simpleand human, and there is hardly a poem in the volume that English lipsmight not have uttered. Sounds of the Temple has much in it that isinteresting in metre as well as in matter:--

 Then sighed a poet from his soul: 'The clouds are blown across the stars, And chill have grown my lattice bars; I cannot keep my vigil whole By the lone candle of my soul. 

 'This reed had once devoutest tongue, And sang as if to its small throat God listened for a perfect note; As charily this lyre was strung: God's praise is slow and has no tongue. '

But the best poem is undoubtedly the Hymn to the Mountain:--

 Within the hollow of thy hand-- This wooded dell half up the height, Where streams take breath midway in flight-- Here let me stand. 

 Here warbles not a lowland bird, Here are no babbling tongues of men; Thy rivers rustling through the glen Alone are heard. 

 Above no pinion cleaves its way, Save when the eagle's wing, as now, With sweep imperial shades thy brow Beetling and grey. 

 What thoughts are thine, majestic peak? And moods that were not born to chime With poets' ineffectual rhyme And numbers weak?

 The green earth spreads thy gaze before, And the unfailing skies are brought Within the level of thy thought. There is no more. 

 The stars salute thy rugged crown With syllables of twinkling fire; Like choral burst from distant choir, Their psalm rolls down. 

 And I within this temple niche, Like statue set where prophets talk, Catch strains they murmur as they walk, And I am rich. 

Miss Ella Curtis's A Game of Chance is certainly the best novel that thisclever young writer has as yet produced. If it has a fault, it is thatit is crowded with too much incident, and often surrenders the study ofcharacter to the development of plot. Indeed, it has many plots, each ofwhich, in more economical hands, would have served as the basis of acomplete story. We have as the central incident the career of a cleverlady's-maid who personifies her mistress, and is welcomed by Sir JohnErskine, an English country gentleman, as the widow of his dead son. Thereal husband of the adventuress tracks his wife to England, and claimsher. She pretends that he is insane, and has him removed. Then he triesto murder her, and when she recovers, she finds her beauty gone and hersecret discovered. There is quite enough sensation here to interest eventhe jaded City man, who is said to have grown quite critical of late onthe subject of what is really a thrilling plot. But Miss Curtis is notsatisfied. The lady's-maid has an extremely handsome brother, who is awonderful musician, and has a divine tenor voice. With him the statelyLady Judith falls wildly in love, and this part of the story is treatedwith a great deal of subtlety and clever analysis. However, Lady Judithdoes not marry her rustic Orpheus, so the social convenances areundisturbed. The romance of the Rector of the Parish, who falls in lovewith a charming school-teacher, is a good deal overshadowed by LadyJudith's story, but it is pleasantly told. A more important episode isthe marriage between the daughter of the Tory squire and the Radicalcandidate for the borough. They separate on their wedding-day, and arenot reconciled till the third volume. No one could say that MissCurtis's book is dull. In fact, her style is very bright and amusing. Itis impossible, perhaps, not to be a little bewildered by the amount ofcharacters, and by the crowded incidents; but, on the whole, the schemeof the construction is clear, and certainly the decoration is admirable. 

(1) Wordsworthiana: A Selection from Papers read to the WordsworthSociety. Edited by William Knight. (Macmillan and Co. )

(2) Mary Myles. By E. M. Edmonds. (Remington and Co. )

(3) Art in the Modern State. By Lady Dilke. (Chapman and Hall. )

(4) Cressy. By Bret Harte. (Macmillan and Co. )

(5) Poems. By Richard Day. (New York: Cassell and Co. )

(6) A Game of Chance. By Ella Curtis. (Hurst and Blackett. )

MR. FROUDE'S BLUE-BOOK

(Pall Mall Gazette, April 13, 1889. )

Blue-books are generally dull reading, but Blue-books on Ireland havealways been interesting. They form the record of one of the greattragedies of modern Europe. In them England has written down herindictment against herself and has given to the world the history of hershame. If in the last century she tried to govern Ireland with aninsolence that was intensified by race hatred and religious prejudice, she has sought to rule her in this century with a stupidity that isaggravated by good intentions. The last of these Blue-books, Mr. Froude's heavy novel, has appeared, however, somewhat too late. Thesociety that he describes has long since passed away. An entirely newfactor has appeared in the social development of the country, and thisfactor is the Irish-American and his influence. To mature its powers, toconcentrate its actions, to learn the secret of its own strength and ofEngland's weakness, the Celtic intellect has had to cross the Atlantic. At home it had but learned the pathetic weakness of nationality; in astrange land it realised what indomitable forces nationality possesses. What captivity was to the Jews, exile has been to the Irish. America andAmerican influence has educated them. Their first practical leader is anIrish-American. 

But while Mr. Froude's book has no practical relation to modern Irishpolitics, and does not offer any solution of the present question, it hasa certain historical value. It is a vivid picture of Ireland in thelatter half of the eighteenth century, a picture often false in itslights and exaggerated in its shadows, but a picture none the less. Mr. Froude admits the martyrdom of Ireland but regrets that the martyrdom wasnot more completely carried out. His ground of complaint against theExecutioner is not his trade but his bungling. It is the bluntness notthe cruelty of the sword that he objects to. Resolute government, thatshallow shibboleth of those who do not understand how complex a thing theart of government is, is his posthumous panacea for past evils. Hishero, Colonel Goring, has the words Law and Order ever on his lips, meaning by the one the enforcement of unjust legislation, and implying bythe other the suppression of every fine national aspiration. That thegovernment should enforce iniquity and the governed submit to it, seemsto Mr. Froude, as it certainly is to many others, the true ideal ofpolitical science. Like most penmen he overrates the power of the sword. Where England has had to struggle she has been wise. Where physicalstrength has been on her side, as in Ireland, she has been made unwieldyby that strength. Her own strong hands have blinded her. She has hadforce but no direction. 

There is, of course, a story in Mr. Froude's novel. It is not simply apolitical disquisition. The interest of the tale, such as it is, centresround two men, Colonel Goring and Morty Sullivan, the Cromwellian and theCelt. These men are enemies by race and creed and feeling. The firstrepresents Mr. Froude's cure for Ireland. He is a resolute 'Englishman, with strong Nonconformist tendencies, ' who plants an industrial colony onthe coast of Kerry, and has deep-rooted objections to that illicit tradewith France which in the last century was the sole method by which theIrish people were enabled to pay their rents to their absentee landlords. Colonel Goring bitterly regrets that the Penal Laws against the Catholicsare not rigorously carried out. He is a '_Police_ at any price' man. 

 'And this, ' said Goring scornfully, 'is what you call governing Ireland, hanging up your law like a scarecrow in the garden till every sparrow has learnt to make a jest of it. Your Popery Acts! Well, you borrowed them from France. The French Catholics did not choose to keep the Hugonots among them, and recalled the Edict of Nantes. As they treated the Hugonots, so you said to all the world that you would treat the Papists. You borrowed from the French the very language of your Statute, but they are not afraid to stand by their law, and you are afraid to stand by yours. You let the people laugh at it, and in teaching them to despise one law, you teach them to despise all laws--God's and man's alike. I cannot say how it will end; but I can tell you this, that you are training up a race with the education which you are giving them that will astonish mankind by and bye. '

Mr. Froude's resume of the history of Ireland is not without power thoughit is far from being really accurate. 'The Irish, ' he tells us, 'haddisowned the facts of life, and the facts of life had proved thestrongest. ' The English, unable to tolerate anarchy so near theirshores, 'consulted the Pope. The Pope gave them leave to interfere, andthe Pope had the best of the bargain. For the English brought him in, and the Irish . . . Kept him there. ' England's first settlers wereNorman nobles. They became more Irish than the Irish, and England foundherself in this difficulty: 'To abandon Ireland would be discreditable, to rule it as a province would be contrary to English traditions. ' Shethen 'tried to rule by dividing, ' and failed. The Pope was too strongfor her. At last she made her great political discovery. What Irelandwanted was evidently an entirely new population 'of the same race and thesame religion as her own. ' The new policy was partly carried out:

 Elizabeth first and then James and then Cromwell replanted the Island, introducing English, Scots, Hugonots, Flemings, Dutch, tens of thousands of families of vigorous and earnest Protestants, who brought their industries along with them. Twice the Irish . . . Tried . . . To drive out this new element . . . They failed. . . . [But] England . . . Had no sooner accomplished her long task than she set herself to work to spoil it again. She destroyed the industries of her colonists by her trade laws. She set the Bishops to rob them of their religion. . . . [As for the gentry, ] The purpose for which they had been introduced into Ireland was unfulfilled. They were but alien intruders, who did nothing, who were allowed to do nothing. The time would come when an exasperated population would demand that the land should be given back to them, and England would then, perhaps, throw the gentry to the wolves, in the hope of a momentary peace. But her own turn would follow. She would be face to face with the old problem, either to make a new conquest or to retire with disgrace. 

Political disquisitions of this kind, and prophecies after the event, arefound all through Mr. Froude's book, and on almost every second page wecome across aphorisms on the Irish character, on the teachings of Irishhistory and on the nature of England's mode of government. Some of themrepresent Mr. Froude's own views, others are entirely dramatic andintroduced for the purpose of characterisation. We append somespecimens. As epigrams they are not very felicitous, but they areinteresting from some points of view. 

 Irish Society grew up in happy recklessness. Insecurity added zest to enjoyment. 

 We Irish must either laugh or cry, and if we went in for crying, we should all hang ourselves. 

 Too close a union with the Irish had produced degeneracy both of character and creed in all the settlements of English. 

 We age quickly in Ireland with the whiskey and the broken heads. 

 The Irish leaders cannot fight. They can make the country ungovernable, and keep an English army occupied in watching them. 

 No nation can ever achieve a liberty that will not be a curse to them, except by arms in the field. 

 [The Irish] are taught from their cradles that English rule is the cause of all their miseries. They were as ill off under their own chiefs; but they would bear from their natural leaders what they will not bear from us, and if we have not made their lot more wretched we have not made it any better. 

 'Patriotism? Yes! Patriotism of the Hibernian order. The country has been badly treated, and is poor and miserable. This is the patriot's stock in trade. Does he want it mended? Not he. His own occupation would be gone. '

 Irish corruption is the twin-brother of Irish eloquence. 

 England will not let us break the heads of our scoundrels; she will not break them herself; we are a free country, and must take the consequences. 

 The functions of the Anglo-Irish Government were to do what ought not to be done, and to leave undone what ought to be done. 

 The Irish race have always been noisy, useless and ineffectual. They have produced nothing, they have done nothing, which it is possible to admire. What they are, that they have always been, and the only hope for them is that their ridiculous Irish nationality should be buried and forgotten. 

 The Irish are the best actors in the world. 

 Order is an exotic in Ireland. It has been imported from England, but it will not grow. It suits neither soil, nor climate. If the English wanted order in Ireland, they should have left none of us alive. 

 When ruling powers are unjust, nature reasserts her rights. 

 Even anarchy has its advantages. 

 Nature keeps an accurate account. . . . The longer a bill is left unpaid, the heavier the accumulation of interest. 

 You cannot live in Ireland without breaking laws on one side or another. Pecca fortiter, therefore, as . . . Luther said. 

 The animal spirits of the Irish remained when all else was gone, and if there was no purpose in their lives, they could at least enjoy themselves. 

 The Irish peasants can make the country hot for the Protestant gentleman, but that is all they are fit for. 

As we said before, if Mr. Froude intended his book to help the ToryGovernment to solve the Irish question he has entirely missed his aim. The Ireland of which he writes has disappeared. As a record, however, ofthe incapacity of a Teutonic to rule a Celtic people against their ownwish, his book is not without value. It is dull, but dull books are verypopular at present; and as people have grown a little tired of talkingabout Robert Elsmere, they will probably take to discussing The TwoChiefs of Dunboy. There are some who will welcome with delight the ideaof solving the Irish question by doing away with the Irish people. Thereare others who will remember that Ireland has extended her boundaries, and that we have now to reckon with her not merely in the Old World butin the New. 

The Two Chiefs of Dunboy: or An Irish Romance of the Last Century. By J. A. Froude. (Longmans, Green and Co. )

SOME LITERARY NOTES--V

(Woman's World, May 1889. )

Miss Caroline Fitz Gerald's volume of poems, Venetia Victrix, isdedicated to Mr. Robert Browning, and in the poem that gives its title tothe book it is not difficult to see traces of Mr. Browning's influence. Venetia Victrix is a powerful psychological study of a man's soul, avivid presentation of a terrible, fiery-coloured moment in a marred andincomplete life. It is sometimes complex and intricate in expression, but then the subject itself is intricate and complex. Plastic simplicityof outline may render for us the visible aspect of life; it is differentwhen we come to deal with those secrets which self-consciousness alonecontains, and which self-consciousness itself can but half reveal. Actiontakes place in the sunlight, but the soul works in the dark. 

There is something curiously interesting in the marked tendency of modernpoetry to become obscure. Many critics, writing with their eyes fixed onthe masterpieces of past literature, have ascribed this tendency towilfulness and to affectation. Its origin is rather to be found in thecomplexity of the new problems, and in the fact that self-consciousnessis not yet adequate to explain the contents of the Ego. In Mr. Browning's poems, as in life itself which has suggested, or rathernecessitated, the new method, thought seems to proceed not on logicallines, but on lines of passion. The unity of the individual is beingexpressed through its inconsistencies and its contradictions. In astrange twilight man is seeking for himself, and when he has found hisown image, he cannot understand it. Objective forms of art, such assculpture and the drama, sufficed one for the perfect presentation oflife; they can no longer so suffice. 

The central motive of Miss Caroline Fitz Gerald's psychological poem isthe study of a man who to do a noble action wrecks his own soul, sells itto evil, and to the spirit of evil. Many martyrs have for a great causesacrificed their physical life; the sacrifice of the spiritual life has amore poignant and a more tragic note. The story is supposed to be toldby a French doctor, sitting at his window in Paris one evening:

 How far off Venice seems to-night! How dim The still-remembered sunsets, with the rim Of gold round the stone haloes, where they stand, Those carven saints, and look towards the land, Right Westward, perched on high, with palm in hand, Completing the peaked church-front. Oh how clear And dark against the evening splendour! Steer Between the graveyard island and the quay, Where North-winds dash the spray on Venice;--see The rosy light behind dark dome and tower, Or gaunt smoke-laden chimney;--mark the power Of Nature's gentleness, in rise or fall Of interlinked beauty, to recall Earth's majesty in desecration's place, Lending yon grimy pile that dream-like face Of evening beauty;--note yon rugged cloud, Red-rimmed and heavy, drooping like a shroud Over Murano in the dying day. I see it now as then--so far away!

The face of a boy in the street catches his eye. He seems to see in itsome likeness to a dead friend. He begins to think, and at lastremembers a hospital ward in Venice:

 'Twas an April day, The year Napoleon's troops took Venice--say The twenty-fifth of April. All alone Walking the ward, I heard a sick man moan, In tones so piteous, as his heart would break: 'Lost, lost, and lost again--for Venice' sake!' I turned. There lay a man no longer young, Wasted with fever. I had marked, none hung About his bed, as friends, with tenderness, And, when the priest went by, he spared to bless, Glancing perplexed--perhaps mere sullenness. I stopped and questioned: 'What is lost, my friend?' 'My soul is lost, and now draws near the end. My soul is surely lost. Send me no priest! They sing and solemnise the marriage feast Of man's salvation in the house of love, And I in Hell, and God in Heaven above, And Venice safe and fair on earth between-- No love of mine--mere service--for my Queen. '

He was a seaman, and the tale he tells the doctor before he dies isstrange and not a little terrible. Wild rage against a foster-brotherwho had bitterly wronged him, and who was one of the ten rulers overVenice, drives him to make a mad oath that on the day when he doesanything for his country's good he will give his soul to Satan. Thatnight he sails for Dalmatia, and as he is keeping the watch, he sees aphantom boat with seven fiends sailing to Venice:

 I heard the fiends' shrill cry: 'For Venice' good! Rival thine ancient foe in gratitude, Then come and make thy home with us in Hell!' I knew it must be so. I knew the spell Of Satan on my soul. I felt the power Granted by God to serve Him one last hour, Then fall for ever as the curse had wrought. I climbed aloft. My brain had grown one thought, One hope, one purpose. And I heard the hiss Of raging disappointment, loth to miss Its prey--I heard the lapping of the flame, That through the blanched figures went and came, Darting in frenzy to the devils' yell. I set that cross on high, and cried: 'To Hell My soul for ever, and my deed to God! Once Venice guarded safe, let this vile clod Drift where fate will. ' And then (the hideous laugh Of fiends in full possession, keen to quaff The wine of one new soul not weak with tears, Pealing like ruinous thunder in mine ears) I fell, and heard no more. The pale day broke Through lazar-windows, when once more I woke, Remembering I might no more dare to pray. 

The idea of the story is extremely powerful, and Venetia Victrix iscertainly the best poem in the volume--better than Ophelion, which isvague, and than A Friar's Story, which is pretty but ordinary. It showsthat we have in Miss Fitz Gerald a new singer of considerable ability andvigour of mind, and it serves to remind us of the splendid dramaticpossibilities extant in life, which are ready for poetry, and unsuitablefor the stage. What is really dramatic is not necessarily that which isfitting for presentation in a theatre. The theatre is an accident of thedramatic form. It is not essential to it. We have been deluded by thename of action. To think is to act. 

Of the shorter poems collected here, this Hymn to Persephone is, perhaps, the best:

 Oh, fill my cup, Persephone, With dim red wine of Spring, And drop therein a faded leaf Plucked from the Autumn's bearded sheaf, Whence, dread one, I may quaff to thee, While all the woodlands ring. 

 Oh, fill my heart, Persephone, With thine immortal pain, That lingers round the willow bowers In memories of old happy hours, When thou didst wander fair and free O'er Enna's blooming plain. 

 Oh, fill my soul, Persephone, With music all thine own! Teach me some song thy childhood knew, Lisped in the meadow's morning dew, Or chant on this high windy lea, Thy godhead's ceaseless moan. 

But this Venetian Song also has a good deal of charm:

 Leaning between carved stone and stone, As glossy birds peer from a nest Scooped in the crumbling trunk where rest Their freckled eggs, I pause alone And linger in the light awhile, Waiting for joy to come to me-- Only the dawn beyond yon isle, Only the sunlight on the sea. 

 I gaze--then turn and ply my loom, Or broider blossoms close beside; The morning world lies warm and wide, But here is dim, cool silent gloom, Gold crust and crimson velvet pile, And not one face to smile on me-- Only the dawn beyond yon isle, Only the sunlight on the sea. 

 Over the world the splendours break Of morning light and noontide glow, And when the broad red sun sinks low, And in the wave long shadows shake, Youths, maidens, glad with song and wile, Glide and are gone, and leave with me Only the dawn beyond yon isle, Only the sunlight on the sea. 

Darwinism and Politics, by Mr. David Ritchie, of Jesus College, Oxford, contains some very interesting speculations on the position and thefuture of women in the modern State. The one objection to the equalityof the sexes that he considers deserves serious attention is that made bySir James Stephen in his clever attack on John Stuart Mill. Sir JamesStephen points out in Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, that women maysuffer more than they have done, if plunged into a nominally equal butreally unequal contest in the already overcrowded labour market. Mr. Ritchie answers that, while the conclusion usually drawn from thisargument is a sentimental reaction in favour of the old family ideal, as, for instance, in Mr. Besant's books, there is another alternative, andthat is the resettling of the labour question. 'The elevation of thestatus of women and the regulation of the conditions of labour areultimately, ' he says, 'inseparable questions. On the basis ofindividualism, I cannot see how it is possible to answer the objectionsof Sir James Stephen. ' Mr. Herbert Spencer, in his Sociology, expresseshis fear that women, if admitted now to political life, might do mischiefby introducing the ethics of the family into the State. 'Under theethics of the family the greatest benefits must be given where the meritsare smallest; under the ethics of the State the benefits must beproportioned to the merits. ' In answer to this, Mr. Ritchie asks whetherin any society we have ever seen people so get benefits in proportion totheir merits, and protests against Mr. Spencer's separation of the ethicsof the family from those of the State. If something is right in afamily, it is difficult to see why it is therefore, without any furtherreason, wrong in the State. If the participation of women in politicsmeans that as a good family educates all its members, so must a goodState, what better issue could there be? The family ideal of the Statemay be difficult of attainment, but as an ideal it is better than thepoliceman theory. It would mean the moralisation of politics. Thecultivation of separate sorts of virtues and separate ideals of duty inmen and women has led to the whole social fabric being weaker andunhealthier than it need be. As for the objection that in countrieswhere it is considered necessary to have compulsory military service forall men, it would be unjust and inexpedient that women should have avoice in political matters, Mr. Ritchie meets it, or tries to meet it, byproposing that all women physically fitted for such purpose should becompelled to undergo training as nurses, and should be liable to becalled upon to serve as nurses in time of war. This training, heremarks, 'would be more useful to them and to the community in time ofpeace than his military training is to the peasant or artisan. ' Mr. Ritchie's little book is extremely suggestive, and full of valuable ideasfor the philosophic student of sociology. 

* * * * *

Mr. Alan Cole's lecture on Irish lace, delivered recently before theSociety of Arts, contains some extremely useful suggestions as to thebest method of securing an immediate connection between the art schoolsof a country and the country's ordinary manufactures. In 1883, Mr. Colewas deputed by the Department of Science and Art to lecture at Cork andat Limerick on the subject of lace-making, and to give a history of itsrise and development in other countries, as well as a review of the manykinds of ornamental patterns used from the sixteenth century to moderntimes. In order to make these lectures of practical value, Mr. Coleplaced typical specimens of Irish laces beside Italian, Flemish, andFrench laces, which seem to be the prototypes of the lace of Ireland. Thepublic interest was immediately aroused. Some of the newspapers stoutlymaintained that the ornament and patterns of Irish lace were of such anational character that it was wrong to asperse them on that score. Others took a different view, and came to the conclusion that Irish lacecould be vastly improved in all respects, if some systematic action couldbe taken to induce the lace-makers to work from more intelligentlycomposed patterns than those in general use. There was a consensus ofopinion that the workmanship of Irish laces was good, and that it couldbe applied to better materials than those ordinarily used, and that itsmethods were suited to render a greater variety of patterns than thoseusually attempted. 

These and other circumstances seem to have prompted the promoters of theCork Exhibition to further efforts in the cause of lace-making. Towardsthe close of the year 1883 they made fresh representations to Government, and inquired what forms of State assistance could be given. A number ofconvents in the neighbourhood of Cork was engaged in giving instructionto children under their care in lace and crochet making. At some, roomswere allotted for the use of grown-up workers who made laces under thesupervision of the nuns. These convents obviously were centres whereexperiments in reform could be tried. The convents, however, lackedinstruction in the designing of patterns for laces. An excellent Schoolof Art was at work at Cork, but the students there had not beeninstructed in specially designing for lace. If the convents with theirworkrooms could be brought into relation with this School of Art, itseemed possible that something of a serious character might be done tobenefit lace-makers, and also to open up a new field in ornamental designfor the students at the School of Art. The rules of the Department ofScience and Art were found to be adapted to aid in meeting such wants asthose sketched out by the promoters at Cork. As the nuns in thedifferent lace-making convents had not been able to attend in Cork tohear Mr. Cole's lectures, they asked that he should visit them and repeatthem at the convents. This Mr. Cole did early in 1884, the masters ofthe local Schools of Art accompanying him on his visits. Negotiationswere forthwith opened for connecting the convents with the art schools. By the end of 1885 some six or seven different lace-making convents hadplaced themselves in connection with Schools of Art at Cork andWaterford. These convents were attended not only by the nuns but byoutside pupils also; and, at the request of the convents, Mr. Cole hasvisited them twice a year, lecturing and giving advice upon designs forlace. The composition of new patterns for lace was attempted, and oldpatterns which had degenerated were revised and redrawn for the use ofthe workers connected with the convents. There are now twelve convents, Mr. Cole tells us, where instruction in drawing and in the composition ofpatterns is given, and some of the students have won some of the higherprizes offered by the Department of Science and Art for designing lace-patterns. 

The Cork School of Art then acquired a collection of finely-patterned oldlaces, selections from which are freely circulated through the differentconvents connected with that school. They have also the privilege ofborrowing similar specimens of old lace from the South Kensington Museum. So successful has been the system of education pursued by Mr. Brennan, the head-master of the Cork School of Art, that two female students ofhis school last year gained the gold and silver medals for their designsfor laces and crochets at the national competition which annually takesplace in London between all the Schools of Art in the United Kingdom. Asfor the many lace-makers who were not connected either with the conventsor with the art schools, in order to assist them, a committee of ladiesand gentlemen interested in Irish lace-making raised subscriptions, andoffered prizes to be competed for by designers generally. The bestdesigns were then placed out with lace-makers, and carried intoexecution. It is, of course, often said that the proper person to makethe design is the lace-maker. Mr. Cole, however, points out that fromthe sixteenth century forward the patterns for ornamental laces havealways been designed by decorative artists having knowledge of thecomposition of ornament, and of the materials for which they were calledupon to design. Lace pattern books were published in considerablequantity in Italy, France and Germany during the sixteenth andseventeenth centuries, and from these the lace-makers worked. Many lace-makers would, no doubt, derive benefit from practice in drawing, indiscriminating between well and badly shaped forms. But the skill theyare primarily required to show and to develop is one of fine fingers inreproducing beautiful forms in threads. The conception, arrangement, anddrawing of beautiful forms for a design, have to be undertaken bydecorative artists acquainted with the limitations of those materials andmethods which the ultimate expression of the design involves. 

This lovely Irish art of lace-making is very much indebted to Mr. Cole, who has really re-created it, given it new life, and shown it the trueartistic lines on which to progress. Hardly 20, 000 pounds a year isspent by England upon Irish laces, and almost all of this goes upon thecheaper and commoner kinds. And yet, as Mr. Cole points out, it ispossible to produce Irish laces of as high artistic quality as almost anyforeign laces. The Queen, Lady Londonderry, Lady Dorothy Nevill, Mrs. Alfred Morrison, and others, have done much to encourage the Irishworkers, and it rests largely with the ladies of England whether thisbeautiful art lives or dies. The real good of a piece of lace, says Mr. Ruskin, is 'that it should show, first, that the designer of it had apretty fancy; next, that the maker of it had fine fingers; lastly, thatthe wearer of it has worthiness or dignity enough to obtain what isdifficult to obtain, and common-sense enough not to wear it on alloccasions. '

* * * * *

The High-Caste Hindu Woman is an interesting book. It is from the pen ofthe Pundita Ramabai Sarasvati, and the introduction is written by MissRachel Bodley, M. D. , the Dean of the Woman's Medical College ofPennsylvania. The story of the parentage of this learned lady is verycurious. A certain Hindu, being on a religious pilgrimage with hisfamily, which consisted of his wife and two daughters, one nine and theother seven years of age, stopped in a town to rest for a day or two. Onemorning the Hindu was bathing in the sacred river Godavari, near thetown, when he saw a fine-looking man coming there to bathe also. Afterthe ablution and the morning prayers were over, the father inquired ofthe stranger who he was and whence he came. On learning his caste, andclan, and dwelling-place, and also that he was a widower, he offered himhis little daughter of nine in marriage. All things were settled in anhour or so; next day the marriage was concluded, and the little girlplaced in the possession of the stranger, who took her nearly ninehundred miles away from her home, and gave her into the charge of hismother. The stranger was the learned Ananta Shastri, a Brahman pundit, who had very advanced views on the subject of woman's education, and hedetermined that he would teach his girl-wife Sanskrit, and give her theintellectual culture that had been always denied to women in India. Theirdaughter was the Pundita Ramabai, who, after the death of her parents, travelled all over India advocating the cause of female education, and towhom seems to be due the first suggestion for the establishment of theprofession of women doctors. In 1866, Miss Mary Carpenter made a shorttour in India for the purpose of finding out some way by which women'scondition in that country might be improved. She at once discovered thatthe chief means by which the desired end could be accomplished was byfurnishing women teachers for the Hindu Zenanas. She suggested that theBritish Government should establish normal schools for training womenteachers, and that scholarships should be awarded to girls in order toprolong their school-going period, and to assist indigent women who wouldotherwise be unable to pursue their studies. 

In response to Miss Carpenter's appeal, upon her return to England, theEnglish Government founded several schools for women in India, and a few'Mary Carpenter Scholarships' were endowed by benevolent persons. Theseschools were open to women of every caste; but while they haveundoubtedly been of use, they have not realised the hopes of theirfounders, chiefly through the impossibility of keeping caste rules inthem. Ramabai, in a very eloquent chapter, proposes to solve the problemin a different way. Her suggestion is that houses should be opened forthe young and high-caste child-widows, where they can take shelterwithout the fear of losing their caste, or of being disturbed in theirreligious belief, and where they may have entire freedom of action asregards caste rules. The whole account given by the Pundita of the lifeof the high-caste Hindu lady is full of suggestion for the socialreformer and the student of progress, and her book, which is wonderfullywell written, is likely to produce a radical change in the educationalschemes that at present prevail in India. 

(1) Venetia Victrix. By Caroline Fitz Gerald. (Macmillan and Co. )

(2) Darwinism and Politics. By David Ritchie, Jesus College, Oxford. (Swan Sonnenschein and Co. )

(3) The High-Caste Hindu Woman. By the Pandita Ramabai Sarasvati. (Belland Sons. )

OUIDA'S NEW NOVEL

(Pall Mall Gazette, May 17, 1889. )

Ouida is the last of the romantics. She belongs to the school of BulwerLytton and George Sand, though she may lack the learning of the one andthe sincerity of the other. She tries to make passion, imagination, andpoetry part of fiction. She still believes in heroes and in heroines. She is florid and fervent and fanciful. Yet even she, the high priestessof the impossible, is affected by her age. Her last book, Guilderoy asshe calls it, is an elaborate psychological study of modern temperaments. For her, it is realistic, and she has certainly caught much of the toneand temper of the society of our day. Her people move with ease andgrace and indolence. The book may be described as a study of the peeragefrom a poetical point of view. Those who are tired of mediocre youngcurates who have doubts, of serious young ladies who have missions, andof the ordinary figureheads of most of the English fiction of our time, might turn with pleasure, if not with profit, to this amazing romance. Itis a resplendent picture of our aristocracy. No expense has been sparedin gilding. For the comparatively small sum of 1 pound, 11s. 6d. One isintroduced to the best society. The central figures are exaggerated, butthe background is admirable. In spite of everything, it gives one asense of something like life. 

What is the story? Well, we must admit that we have a faint suspicionthat Ouida has told it to us before. Lord Guilderoy, 'whose name was asold as the days of Knut, ' falls madly in love, or fancies that he fallsmadly in love, with a rustic Perdita, a provincial Artemis who has 'aGainsborough face, with wide-opened questioning eyes and tumbled auburnhair. ' She is poor but well-born, being the only child of Mr. Vernon ofLlanarth, a curious recluse, who is half a pedant and half Don Quixote. Guilderoy marries her and, tiring of her shyness, her lack of power toexpress herself, her want of knowledge of fashionable life, returns to anold passion for a wonderful creature called the Duchess of Soria. LadyGuilderoy becomes ice; the Duchess becomes fire; at the end of the bookGuilderoy is a pitiable object. He has to submit to be forgiven by onewoman, and to endure to be forgotten by the other. He is thoroughlyweak, thoroughly worthless, and the most fascinating person in the wholestory. Then there is his sister Lady Sunbury, who is very anxious forGuilderoy to marry, and is quite determined to hate his wife. She isreally a capital sketch. Ouida describes her as 'one of those admirablyvirtuous women who are more likely to turn men away from the paths ofvirtue than the wickedest of sirens. ' She irritates herself, alienatesher children, and infuriates her husband:

 'You are perfectly right; I know you are always right; I admit you are; but it is just that which makes you so damnably odious!' said Lord Sunbury once, in a burst of rage, in his town house, speaking in such stentorian tones that the people passing up Grosvenor Street looked up at his open windows, and a crossing-sweeper said to a match- seller, 'My eye! ain't he giving it to the old gal like blazes. '

The noblest character in the book is Lord Aubrey. As he is not a geniushe, naturally, behaves admirably on every occasion. He begins by pityingthe neglected Lady Guilderoy, and ends by loving her, but he makes thegreat renunciation with considerable effect, and, having induced LadyGuilderoy to receive back her husband, he accepts 'a distant and arduousViceroyalty. ' He is Ouida's ideal of the true politician, for Ouida hasapparently taken to the study of English politics. A great deal of herbook is devoted to political disquisitions. She believes that the properrulers of a country like ours are the aristocrats. Oligarchy has greatfascinations for her. She thinks meanly of the people and adores theHouse of Lords and Lord Salisbury. Here are some of her views. We willnot call them ideas:

 The House of Lords wants nothing of the nation, and therefore it is the only candid and disinterested guardian of the people's needs and resources. It has never withstood the real desire of the country: it has only stood between the country and its impetuous and evanescent follies. 

 A democracy cannot understand honour; how should it? The Caucus is chiefly made up of men who sand their sugar, put alum in their bread, forge bayonets and girders which bend like willow-wands, send bad calico to India, and insure vessels at Lloyd's which they know will go to the bottom before they have been ten days at sea. 

 Lord Salisbury has often been accused of arrogance; people have never seen that what they mistook for arrogance was the natural, candid consciousness of a great noble that he is more capable of leading the country than most men composing it would be. 

 Democracy, after having made everything supremely hideous and uncomfortable for everybody, always ends by clinging to the coat tails of some successful general. 

 The prosperous politician may be honest, but his honesty is at best a questionable quality. The moment that a thing is a metier, it is wholly absurd to talk about any disinterestedness in the pursuit of it. To the professional politician national affairs are a manufacture into which he puts his audacity and his time, and out of which he expects to make so much percentage for his lifetime. 

 There is too great a tendency to govern the world by noise. 

Ouida's aphorisms on women, love, and modern society are somewhat morecharacteristic:

 Women speak as though the heart were to be treated at will like a stone, or a bath. Half the passions of men die early, because they are expected to be eternal. It is the folly of life that lends charm to it. What is the cause of half the misery of women? That their love is so much more tenacious than the man's: it grows stronger as his grows weaker. To endure the country in England for long, one must have the rusticity of Wordsworth's mind, and boots and stockings as homely. It is because men feel the necessity to explain that they drop into the habit of saying what is not true. Wise is the woman who never insists on an explanation. Love can make its own world in a solitude a deux, but marriage cannot. Nominally monogamous, all cultured society is polygamous; often even polyandrous. Moralists say that a soul should resist passion. They might as well say that a house should resist an earthquake. The whole world is just now on its knees before the poorer classes: all the cardinal virtues are taken for granted in them, and it is only property of any kind which is the sinner. Men are not merciful to women's tears as a rule; and when it is a woman belonging to them who weeps, they only go out, and slam the door behind them. Men always consider women unjust to them, when they fail to deify their weaknesses. No passion, once broken, will ever bear renewal. Feeling loses its force and its delicacy if we put it under the microscope too often. Anything which is not flattery seems injustice to a woman. When society is aware that you think it a flock of geese, it revenges itself by hissing loudly behind your back. 

Of descriptions of scenery and art we have, of course, a large number, and it is impossible not to recognise the touch of the real Ouida mannerin the following:

 It was an old palace: lofty, spacious, magnificent, and dull. Busts of dusky yellow marble, weird bronzes stretching out gaunt arms into the darkness, ivories brown with age, worn brocades with gold threads gleaming in them, and tapestries with strange and pallid figures of dead gods, were all half revealed and half obscured in the twilight. As he moved through them, a figure which looked almost as pale as the Adonis of the tapestry and was erect and motionless like the statue of the wounded Love, came before his sight out of the darkness. It was that of Gladys. 

It is a manner full of exaggeration and overemphasis, but with someremarkable rhetorical qualities and a good deal of colour. Ouida is fondof airing a smattering of culture, but she has a certain intrinsicinsight into things and, though she is rarely true, she is never dull. Guilderoy, with all its faults, which are great, and its absurdities, which are greater, is a book to be read. 

Guilderoy. By Ouida. (Chatto and Windus. )

SOME LITERARY NOTES--VI

(Woman's World, June 1889. )

A writer in the Quarterly Review for January 1874 says:

 No literary event since the war has excited anything like such a sensation in Paris as the publication of the Lettres a une Inconnue. Even politics became a secondary consideration for the hour, and academicians or deputies of opposite parties might be seen eagerly accosting each other in the Chamber or the street to inquire who this fascinating and perplexing 'unknown' could be. The statement in the Revue des Deux Mondes that she was an Englishwoman, moving in brilliant society, was not supported by evidence; and M. Blanchard, the painter, from whom the publisher received the manuscripts, died most provokingly at the very commencement of the inquiry, and made no sign. Some intimate friends of Merimee, rendered incredulous by wounded self-love at not having been admitted to his confidence, insisted that there was no secret to tell; their hypothesis being that the Inconnue was a myth, and the letters a romance, with which some petty details of actual life had been interwoven to keep up the mystification. 

But an artist like Merimee would not have left his work in so unformed astate, so defaced by repetitions, or with such a want of proportionbetween the parts. The Inconnue was undoubtedly a real person, and herletters in answer to those of Merimee have just been published by Messrs. Macmillan under the title of An Author's Love. 

Her letters? Well, they are such letters as she might have written. 'Bythe tideless sea at Cannes on a summer day, ' says their anonymous author, 'I had fallen asleep, and the plashing of the waves upon the shore haddoubtless made me dream. When I awoke the yellow paper-covered volumesof Prosper Merimee's Lettres a une Inconnue lay beside me; I had beenreading the book before I fell asleep, but the answers--had they everbeen written, or had I only dreamed?' The invention of the love-lettersof a curious and unknown personality, the heroine of one of the greatliterary flirtations of our age, was a clever idea, and certainly theauthor has carried out his scheme with wonderful success; with suchsuccess indeed that it is said that one of our statesmen, whose nameoccurs more than once in the volume, was for a moment completely taken inby what is really a jeu-d'esprit, the first serious joke perpetrated byMessrs. Macmillan in their publishing capacity. Perhaps it is too muchto call it a joke. It is a fine, delicate piece of fiction, animaginative attempt to complete a real romance. As we had the letters ofthe academic Romeo, it was obviously right that we should pretend we hadthe answers of the clever and somewhat mondaine Juliet. Or is it Julietherself, in her little Paris boudoir, looking over these two volumes witha sad, cynical smile? Well, to be put into fiction is always a tributeto one's reality. 

As for extracts from these fascinating forgeries, the letters should beread in conjunction with those of Merimee himself. It is difficult tojudge of them by samples. We find the Inconnue first in London, probablyin 1840. 

 Little (she writes) can you imagine the storm of indignation you aroused in me by your remark that your feelings for me were those suitable for a fourteen-year-old niece. Merci. Anything less like a respectable uncle than yourself I cannot well imagine. The role would never suit you, believe me, so do not try it. 

 Now in return for your story of the phlegmatic musical animal who called forth such stormy devotion in a female breast, and who, himself cold and indifferent, was loved to the extent of a watery grave being sought by his inamorata as solace for his indifference, let _me_ ask the question why the women who torment men with their uncertain tempers, drive them wild with jealousy, laugh contemptuously at their humble entreaties, and fling their money to the winds, have twice the hold upon their affections that the patient, long-suffering, domestic, frugal Griseldas have, whose existences are one long penance of unsuccessful efforts to please? Answer this comprehensively, and you will have solved a riddle which has puzzled women since Eve asked questions in Paradise. 

Later on she writes:

 Why should all natures be alike? It would make the old saws useless if they were, and deprive us of one of the truest of them all, 'Variety is the spice of life. ' How terribly monotonous it would be if all the flowers were roses, every woman a queen, and each man a philosopher. My private opinion is that it takes at least six men such as one meets every day to make one really valuable one. I like so many men for one particular quality which they possess, and so few men for all. Comprenez-vous?

In another place:

 Is it not a trifle dangerous, this experiment we are trying of a friendship in pen and ink and paper? A letter. What thing on earth more dangerous to confide in? Written at blood heat, it may reach its destination when the recipient's mental thermometer counts zero, and the burning words and thrilling sentences may turn to ice and be congealed as they are read. . . . A letter; the most uncertain thing in a world of uncertainties, the best or the worst thing devised by mortals. 

Again:

 Surely it was for you, mon cher, that the description given of a friend of mine was originally intended. He is a trifle cynical, this friend, and decidedly pessimistic, and of him it was reported that he never believed in anything until he saw it, and then he was convinced that it was an optical illusion. The accuracy of the description struck me. 

They seem to have loved each other best when they were parted. 

 I think I cannot bear it much longer, this incessant quarrelling when we meet, and your unkindness during the short time that you are with me. Why not let it all end? it would be better for both of us. I do not love you less when I write these words; if you could know the sadness which they echo in my heart you would believe this. No, I think I love you more, but I cannot understand you. As you have often said, our natures must be very different, entirely different; if so, what is this curious bond between them? To me you seem possessed with some strange restlessness and morbid melancholy which utterly spoils your life, and in return you never see me without overwhelming me with reproaches, if not for one thing, for another. I tell you I cannot, will not, bear it longer. If you love me, then in God's name cease tormenting me as well as yourself with these wretched doubts and questionings and complaints. I have been ill, seriously ill, and there is nothing to account for my illness save the misery of this apparently hopeless state of things existing between us. You have made me weep bitter tears of alternate self-reproach and indignation, and finally of complete miserable bewilderment as to this unhappy condition of affairs. Believe me, tears like these are not good to mingle with love, they are too bitter, too scorching, they blister love's wings and fall too heavily on love's heart. I feel worn out with a dreary sort of hopelessness; if you know a cure for pain like this send it to me quickly. 

Yet, in the very next letter, she says to him:

 Although I said good-bye to you less than an hour ago, I cannot refrain from writing to tell you that a happy calm which seems to penetrate my whole being seems also to have wiped out all remembrance of the misery and unhappiness which has overwhelmed me lately. Why cannot it always be so, or would life perhaps be then too blessed, too wholly happy for it to be life? I know that you are free to-night, will you not write to me, that the first words my eyes fall upon to- morrow shall prove that to-day has not been a dream? Yes, write to me. 

The letter that immediately follows is one of six words only:

 Let me dream--Let me dream. 

In the following there are interesting touches of actuality:

 Did you ever try a cup of tea (the national beverage, by the way) at an English railway station? If you have not, I would advise you, as a friend, to continue to abstain! The names of the American drinks are rather against them, the straws are, I think, about the best part of them. You do not tell me what you think of Mr. Disraeli. I once met him at a ball at the Duke of Sutherland's in the long picture gallery of Stafford House. I was walking with Lord Shrewsbury, and without a word of warning he stopped and introduced him, mentioning with reckless mendacity that I had read every book he had written and admired them all, then he coolly walked off and left me standing face to face with the great statesman. He talked to me for some time, and I studied him carefully. I should say he was a man with one steady aim: endless patience, untiring perseverance, iron concentration; marking out one straight line before him so unbending that despite themselves men stand aside as it is drawn straightly and steadily on. A man who believes that determination brings strength, strength brings endurance, and endurance brings success. You know how often in his novels he speaks of the influence of women, socially, morally, and politically, yet his manner was the least interested or deferential in talking that I have ever met with in a man of his class. He certainly thought this particular woman of singularly small account, or else the brusque and tactless allusion to his books may perhaps have annoyed him as it did me; but whatever the cause, when he promptly left me at the first approach of a mutual acquaintance, I felt distinctly snubbed. Of the two men, Mr. Gladstone was infinitely more agreeable in his manner, he left one with the pleasant feeling of measuring a little higher in cubic inches than one did before, than which I know no more delightful sensation. A Paris, bientot. 

Elsewhere, we find cleverly-written descriptions of life in Italy, inAlgiers, at Hombourg, at French boarding-houses; stories about NapoleonIII. , Guizot, Prince Gortschakoff, Montalembert, and others; politicalspeculations, literary criticisms, and witty social scandal; andeverywhere a keen sense of humour, a wonderful power of observation. Asreconstructed in these letters, the Inconnue seems to have been notunlike Merimee himself. She had the same restless, unyielding, independent character. Each desired to analyse the other. Each, being acritic, was better fitted for friendship than for love. 'We are sodifferent, ' said Merimee once to her, 'that we can hardly understand eachother. ' But it was because they were so alike that each remained amystery to the other. Yet they ultimately attained to a high altitude ofloyal and faithful friendship, and from a purely literary point of viewthese fictitious letters give the finishing touch to the strange romancethat so stirred Paris fifteen years ago. Perhaps the real letters willbe published some day. When they are, how interesting to compare them!

The Bird-Bride, by Graham R. Tomson, is a collection of romantic ballads, delicate sonnets, and metrical studies in foreign fanciful forms. Thepoem that gives its title to the book is the lament of an Eskimo hunterover the loss of his wife and children. 

 Years agone, on the flat white strand, I won my sweet sea-girl: Wrapped in my coat of the snow-white fur, I watched the wild birds settle and stir, The grey gulls gather and whirl. 

 One, the greatest of all the flock, Perched on an ice-floe bare, Called and cried as her heart were broke, And straight they were changed, that fleet bird-folk, To women young and fair. 

 Swift I sprang from my hiding-place And held the fairest fast; I held her fast, the sweet, strange thing: Her comrades skirled, but they all took wing, And smote me as they passed. 

 I bore her safe to my warm snow house; Full sweetly there she smiled; And yet, whenever the shrill winds blew, She would beat her long white arms anew, And her eyes glanced quick and wild. 

 But I took her to wife, and clothed her warm With skins of the gleaming seal; Her wandering glances sank to rest When she held a babe to her fair, warm breast, And she loved me dear and leal. 

 Together we tracked the fox and the seal, And at her behest I swore That bird and beast my bow might slay For meat and for raiment, day by day, But never a grey gull more. 

Famine comes upon the land, and the hunter, forgetting his oath, slaysfour sea-gulls for food. The bird-wife 'shrilled out in a woful cry, 'and taking the plumage of the dead birds, she makes wings for herchildren and for herself, and flies away with them. 

 'Babes of mine, of the wild wind's kin, Feather ye quick, nor stay. Oh, oho! but the wild winds blow! Babes of mine, it is time to go: Up, dear hearts, and away!'

 And lo! the grey plumes covered them all, Shoulder and breast and brow. I felt the wind of their whirling flight: Was it sea or sky? was it day or night? It is always night-time now. 

 Dear, will you never relent, come back? I loved you long and true. O winged white wife, and our children three, Of the wild wind's kin though you surely be, Are ye not of my kin too?

 Ay, ye once were mine, and, till I forget, Ye are mine forever and aye, Mine, wherever your wild wings go, While shrill winds whistle across the snow And the skies are blear and grey. 

Some powerful and strong ballads follow, many of which, such as The CruelPriest, Deid Folks' Ferry, and Marchen, are in that curious combinationof Scotch and Border dialect so much affected now by our modern poets. Certainly dialect is dramatic. It is a vivid method of re-creating apast that never existed. It is something between 'A Return to Nature'and 'A Return to the Glossary. ' It is so artificial that it is reallynaive. From the point of view of mere music, much may be said for it. Wonderful diminutives lend new notes of tenderness to the song. Thereare possibilities of fresh rhymes, and in search for a fresh rhyme poetsmay be excused if they wander from the broad highroad of classicalutterance into devious byways and less-trodden paths. Sometimes one istempted to look on dialect as expressing simply the pathos ofprovincialisms, but there is more in it than mere mispronunciations. Withthe revival of an antique form, often comes the revival of an antiquespirit. Through limitations that are sometimes uncouth, and alwaysnarrow, comes Tragedy herself; and though she may stammer in herutterance, and deck herself in cast-off weeds and trammelling raiment, still we must hold ourselves in readiness to accept her, so rare are hervisits to us now, so rare her presence in an age that demands a happyending from every play, and that sees in the theatre merely a source ofamusement. The form, too, of the ballad--how perfect it is in itsdramatic unity! It is so perfect that we must forgive it its dialect, ifit happens to speak in that strange tongue. 

 Then by cam' the bride's company Wi' torches burning bright. 'Tak' up, tak' up your bonny bride A' in the mirk midnight!'

 Oh, wan, wan was the bridegroom's face And wan, wan was the bride, But clay-cauld was the young mess-priest That stood them twa beside!

 Says, 'Rax me out your hand, Sir Knight, And wed her wi' this ring'; And the deid bride's hand it was as cauld As ony earthly thing. 

 The priest he touched that lady's hand, And never a word he said; The priest he touched that lady's hand, And his ain was wet and red. 

 The priest he lifted his ain right hand, And the red blood dripped and fell. Says, 'I loved ye, lady, and ye loved me; Sae I took your life mysel'. '

 . . . . . 

 Oh! red, red was the dawn o' day, And tall was the gallows-tree: The Southland lord to his ain has fled And the mess-priest's hangit hie!

Of the sonnets, this To Herodotus is worth quoting:

 Far-travelled coaster of the midland seas, What marvels did those curious eyes behold! Winged snakes, and carven labyrinths of old; The emerald column raised to Heracles; King Perseus' shrine upon the Chemmian leas; Four-footed fishes, decked with gems and gold: But thou didst leave some secrets yet untold, And veiled the dread Osirian mysteries. 

 And now the golden asphodels among Thy footsteps fare, and to the lordly dead Thou tellest all the stories left unsaid Of secret rites and runes forgotten long, Of that dark folk who ate the Lotus-bread And sang the melancholy Linus-song. 

Mrs. Tomson has certainly a very refined sense of form. Her verse, especially in the series entitled New Words to Old Tunes, has grace anddistinction. Some of the shorter poems are, to use a phrase madeclassical by Mr. Pater, 'little carved ivories of speech. ' She is one ofour most artistic workers in poetry, and treats language as a finematerial. 

(1) An Author's Love: Being the Unpublished Letters of Prosper Merimee's'Inconnue. ' (Macmillan and Co. )

(2) The Bird-Bride: A Volume of Ballads and Sonnets. By Graham R. Tomson. (Longmans, Green and Co. )

A THOUGHT-READER'S NOVEL

(Pall Mall Gazette, June 5, 1889. )

There is a great deal to be said in favour of reading a novel backwards. The last page is, as a rule, the most interesting, and when one beginswith the catastrophe or the denoument one feels on pleasant terms ofequality with the author. It is like going behind the scenes of atheatre. One is no longer taken in, and the hairbreadth escapes of thehero and the wild agonies of the heroine leave one absolutely unmoved. One knows the jealously-guarded secret, and one can afford to smile atthe quite unnecessary anxiety that the puppets of fiction always considerit their duty to display. In the case of Mr. Stuart Cumberland's novel, The Vasty Deep, as he calls it, the last page is certainly thrilling andmakes us curious to know more about 'Brown, the medium. '

Scene, a padded room in a mad-house in the United States. 

A gibbering lunatic discovered dashing wildly about the chamber as if inthe act of chasing invisible forms. 

'This is our worst case, ' says a doctor opening the cell to one of thevisitors in lunacy. 'He was a spirit medium and he is hourly haunted bythe creations of his fancy. We have to carefully watch him, for he hasdeveloped suicidal tendencies. '

The lunatic makes a dash at the retreating form of his visitors, and, asthe door closes upon him, sinks with a yell upon the floor. 

A week later the lifeless body of Brown, the medium, is found suspendedfrom the gas bracket in his cell. 

How clearly one sees it all! How forcible and direct the style is! Andwhat a thrilling touch of actuality the simple mention of the 'gasbracket' gives us! Certainly The Vasty Deep is a book to be read. 

And we have read it; read it with great care. Though it is largelyautobiographical, it is none the less a work of fiction and, though someof us may think that there is very little use in exposing what is alreadyexposed and revealing the secrets of Polichinelle, no doubt there aremany who will be interested to hear of the tricks and deceptions ofcrafty mediums, of their gauze masks, telescopic rods and invisible silkthreads, and of the marvellous raps they can produce simply by displacingthe peroneus longus muscle! The book opens with a description of thescene by the death-bed of Alderman Parkinson. Dr. Josiah Brown, theeminent medium, is in attendance and tries to comfort the honest merchantby producing noises on the bedpost. Mr. Parkinson, however, beingextremely anxious to revisit Mrs. Parkinson, in a materialised form afterdeath, will not be satisfied till he has received from his wife a solemnpromise that she will not marry again, such a marriage being, in hiseyes, nothing more nor less than bigamy. Having received an assurance tothis effect from her, Mr. Parkinson dies, his soul, according to themedium, being escorted to the spheres by 'a band of white-robed spirits. 'This is the prologue. The next chapter is entitled 'Five Years After. 'Violet Parkinson, the Alderman's only child, is in love with Jack Alston, who is 'poor, but clever. ' Mrs. Parkinson, however, will not hear of anymarriage till the deceased Alderman has materialised himself and givenhis formal consent. A seance is held at which Jack Alston unmasks themedium and shows Dr. Josiah Brown to be an impostor--a foolish act, onhis part, as he is at once ordered to leave the house by the infuriatedMrs. Parkinson, whose faith in the Doctor is not in the least shaken bythe unfortunate exposure. 

The lovers are consequently parted. Jack sails for Newfoundland, isshipwrecked and carefully, somewhat too carefully, tended by 'La-ki-wa, or the Star that shines, ' a lovely Indian maiden who belongs to the tribeof the Micmacs. She is a fascinating creature who wears 'a necklacecomposed of thirteen nuggets of pure gold, ' a blanket of Englishmanufacture and trousers of tanned leather. In fact, as Mr. StuartCumberland observes, she looks 'the embodiment of fresh dewy morn. ' WhenJack, on recovering his senses, sees her, he naturally inquires who sheis. She answers, in the simple utterance endeared to us by FenimoreCooper, 'I am La-ki-wa. I am the only child of my father, Tall Pine, chief of the Dildoos. ' She talks, Mr. Cumberland informs us, very goodEnglish. Jack at once entrusts her with the following telegram which hewrites on the back of a five-pound note:--

 Miss Violet Parkinson, Hotel Kronprinz, Franzensbad, Austria. --Safe. JACK. 

But La-ki-wa, we regret to say, says to herself, 'He belongs to TallPine, to the Dildoos, and to me, ' and never sends the telegram. Subsequently, La-ki-wa proposes to Jack who promptly rejects her and, with the usual callousness of men, offers her a brother's love. La-ki-wa, naturally, regrets the premature disclosure of her passion and weeps. 'Mybrother, ' she remarks, 'will think that I have the timid heart of a deerwith the crying voice of a papoose. I, the daughter of Tall Pine--I aMicmac, to show the grief that is in my heart. O, my brother, I amashamed. ' Jack comforts her with the hollow sophistries of a civilisedbeing and gives her his photograph. As he is on his way to the steamerhe receives from Big Deer a soiled piece of a biscuit bag. On it iswritten La-ki-wa's confession of her disgraceful behaviour about thetelegram. 'His thoughts, ' Mr. Cumberland tells us, 'were bitter towardsLa-ki-wa, but they gradually softened when he remembered what he owedher. '

Everything ends happily. Jack arrives in England just in time to preventDr. Josiah Brown from mesmerising Violet whom the cunning doctor isanxious to marry, and he hurls his rival out of the window. The victimis discovered 'bruised and bleeding among the broken flower-pots' by acomic policeman. Mrs. Parkinson still believes in spiritualism, butrefuses to have anything to do with Brown as she discovers that thedeceased Alderman's 'materialised beard' was made only of 'horrid, coarsehorsehair. ' Jack and Violet are married at last and Jack is horridenough to send to 'La-ki-wa' another photograph. The end of Dr. Brown ischronicled above. Had we not known what was in store for him we shouldhardly have got through the book. There is a great deal too much paddingin it about Dr. Slade and Dr. Bartram and other mediums, and thedisquisitions on the commercial future of Newfoundland seem endless andare intolerable. However, there are many publics, and Mr. StuartCumberland is always sure of an audience. His chief fault is a tendencyto low comedy; but some people like low comedy in fiction. 

The Vasty Deep: A Strange Story of To-day. By Stuart Cumberland. (Sampson Low and Co. )

THE POETS' CORNER--X

(Pall Mall Gazette, June 24, 1889. )

Is Mr. Alfred Austin among the Socialists? Has somebody converted therespectable editor of the respectable National Review? Has even dulnessbecome revolutionary? From a poem in Mr. Austin's last volume this wouldseem to be the case. It is perhaps unfair to take our rhymers tooseriously. Between the casual fancies of a poet and the callous facts ofprose there is, or at least there should be, a wide difference. Butsince the poem in question, Two Visions, as Mr. Austin calls it, wasbegun in 1863 and revised in 1889 we may regard it as fullyrepresentative of Mr. Austin's mature views. He gives us, at any rate, in its somewhat lumbering and pedestrian verses, his conception of theperfect state:

 Fearless, unveiled, and unattended Strolled maidens to and fro: Youths looked respect, but never bended Obsequiously low. 

 And each with other, sans condition, Held parley brief or long, Without provoking _coarse suspicion Of marriage_, or of wrong. 

 All were well clad, and none were better, And gems beheld I none, Save where there hung a jewelled fetter, Symbolic, in the sun. 

 I saw a noble-looking maiden Close Dante's solemn book, And go, with crate of linen laden And wash it in the brook. 

 Anon, a broad-browed _poet, dragging A load of logs along_, To warm his hearth, withal not flagging In current of his song. 

 Each one some handicraft attempted Or helped to till the soil: None but the aged were exempted From communistic toil. 

Such an expression as 'coarse suspicion of marriage' is not veryfortunate; the log-rolling poet of the fifth stanza is an ideal that wehave already realised and one in which we had but little comfort, and thefourth stanza leaves us in doubt whether Mr. Austin means thatwasherwomen are to take to reading Dante, or that students of Italianliterature are to wash their own clothes. But, on the whole, though Mr. Austin's vision of the citta divina of the future is not veryinspiriting, it is certainly extremely interesting as a sign of thetimes, and it is evident from the two concluding lines of the followingstanzas that there will be no danger of the intellect being overworked:

 Age lorded not, nor rose the hectic Up to the cheek of youth; But reigned throughout their dialectic Sobriety of truth. 

 And if a long-held contest tended To ill-defined result, _It was by calm consent suspended As over-difficult_. 

Mr. Austin, however, has other moods, and, perhaps, he is at his bestwhen he is writing about flowers. Occasionally he wearies the reader bytedious enumerations of plants, lacking indeed reticence and tact andselection in many of his descriptions, but, as a rule, he is verypleasant when he is babbling of green fields. How pretty these stanzasfrom the dedication are!

 When vines, just newly burgeoned, link Their hands to join the dance of Spring, Green lizards glisten from cleft and chink, And almond blossoms rosy pink Cluster and perch, ere taking wing;

 Where over strips of emerald wheat Glimmer red peach and snowy pear, And nightingales all day long repeat Their love-song, not less glad than sweet They chant in sorrow and gloom elsewhere;

 Where purple iris-banners scale Defending walls and crumbling ledge, And virgin windflowers, lithe and frail, Now mantling red, now trembling pale, Peep out from furrow and hide in hedge. 

Some of the sonnets also (notably, one entitled When Acorns Fall) arevery charming, and though, as a whole, Love's Widowhood is tedious andprolix, still it contains some very felicitous touches. We wish, however, that Mr. Austin would not write such lines as

 Pippins of every sort, and _codlins manifold_. 

'Codlins manifold' is a monstrous expression. 

Mr. W. J. Linton's fame as a wood-engraver has somewhat obscured themerits of his poetry. His Claribel and Other Poems, published in 1865, is now a scarce book, and far more scarce is the collection of lyricswhich he printed in 1887 at his own press and brought out under the titleof Love-Lore. The large and handsome volume that now lies before uscontains nearly all these later poems as well as a selection fromClaribel and many renderings, in the original metre, of French poemsranging from the thirteenth century to our own day. A portrait of Mr. Linton is prefixed, and the book is dedicated 'To William Bell Scott, myfriend for nearly fifty years. ' As a poet Mr. Linton is always fancifulwith a studied fancifulness, and often felicitous with a chance felicity. He is fascinated by our seventeenth-century singers, and has, here andthere, succeeded in catching something of their quaintness and not alittle of their charm. There is a pleasant flavour about his verse. Itis entirely free from violence and from vagueness, those two besettingsins of so much modern poetry. It is clear in outline and restrained inform, and, at its best, has much that is light and lovely about it. Howgraceful, for instance, this is!

 BARE FEET

 O fair white feet! O dawn-white feet Of Her my hope may claim! Bare-footed through the dew she came Her Love to meet. 

 Star-glancing feet, the windflowers sweet Might envy, without shame, As through the grass they lightly came, Her Love to meet. 

 O Maiden sweet, with flower-kiss'd feet! My heart your footstool name! Bare-footed through the dew she came, Her Love to meet. 

'Vindicate Gemma!' was Longfellow's advice to Miss Heloise Durant whenshe proposed to write a play about Dante. Longfellow, it may beremarked, was always on the side of domesticity. It was the secret ofhis popularity. We cannot say, however, that Miss Durant has made uslike Gemma better. She is not exactly the Xantippe whom Boccacciodescribes, but she is very boring, for all that:

 GEMMA. The more thou meditat'st, more mad art thou. Clowns, with their love, can cheer poor wives' hearts more O'er black bread and goat's cheese than thou canst mine O'er red Vernaccia, spite of all thy learning! Care I how tortured spirits feel in hell? DANTE. Thou tortur'st mine. GEMMA. Or how souls sing in heaven? DANTE. Would I were there. GEMMA. All folly, naught but folly. DANTE. Thou canst not understand the mandates given To poets by their goddess Poesy. . . . GEMMA. Canst ne'er speak prose? Why daily clothe thy thoughts In strangest garb, as if thy wits played fool At masquerade, where no man knows a maid From matron? Fie on poets' mutterings! DANTE (to himself). If, then, the soul absorbed at last to whole-- GEMMA. Fie! fie! I say. Art thou bewitched? DANTE. O! peace. GEMMA. Dost thou deem me deaf and dumb? DANTE. O! that thou wert. 

Dante is certainly rude, but Gemma is dreadful. The play is well meantbut it is lumbering and heavy, and the blank verse has absolutely nomerit. 

Father O'Flynn and Other Irish Lyrics, by Mr. A. P. Graves, is acollection of poems in the style of Lover. Most of them are written indialect, and, for the benefit of English readers, notes are appended inwhich the uninitiated are informed that 'brogue' means a boot, that'mavourneen' means my dear, and that 'astore' is a term of affection. Here is a specimen of Mr. Graves's work:

 'Have you e'er a new song, My Limerick Poet, To help us along Wid this terrible boat, Away over to Tork?' 'Arrah I understand; For all of your work, 'Twill tighten you, boys, To cargo that sand To the overside strand, Wid the current so strong Unless you've a song-- A song to lighten and brighten you, boys. . . . '

It is a very dreary production and does not 'lighten and brighten' us abit. The whole volume should be called The Lucubrations of a StageIrishman. 

The anonymous author of The Judgment of the City is a sort of bad Blake. So at least his prelude seems to suggest:

 Time, the old viol-player, For ever thrills his ancient strings With the flying bow of Fate, and thence Much discord, but some music, brings. 

 His ancient strings are truth, Love, hate, hope, fear; And his choicest melody Is the song of the faithful seer. 

As he progresses, however, he develops into a kind of inferior Clough andwrites heavy hexameters upon modern subjects:

 Here for a moment stands in the light at the door of a playhouse, One who is dignified, masterly, hard in the pride of his station; Here too, the stateliest of matrons, sour in the pride of her station; With them their daughter, sad-faced and listless, half-crushed to their likeness. 

He has every form of sincerity except the sincerity of the artist, adefect that he shares with most of our popular writers. 

(1) Love's Widowhood and Other Poems. By Alfred Austin. (Macmillan andCo. )

(2) Poems and Translations. By W. J. Linton. (Nimmo. )

(3) Dante: a Dramatic Poem. By Heloise Durant. (Kegan Paul. )

(4) Father O'Flynn and Other Irish Lyrics. By A. P. Graves. (SwanSonnenschein and Co. )

(5) The Judgment of the City and Other Poems. (Swan Sonnenschein andCo. )

MR. SWINBURNE'S LAST VOLUME

(Pall Mall Gazette, June 27, 1889. )

Mr. Swinburne once set his age on fire by a volume of very perfect andvery poisonous poetry. Then he became revolutionary and pantheistic, andcried out against those that sit in high places both in heaven and onearth. Then he invented Marie Stuart and laid upon us the heavy burdenof Bothwell. Then he retired to the nursery and wrote poems aboutchildren of a somewhat over-subtle character. He is now extremelypatriotic, and manages to combine with his patriotism a strong affectionfor the Tory party. He has always been a great poet. But he has hislimitations, the chief of which is, curiously enough, the entire lack ofany sense of limit. His song is nearly always too loud for his subject. His magnificent rhetoric, nowhere more magnificent than in the volumethat now lies before us, conceals rather than reveals. It has been saidof him, and with truth, that he is a master of language, but with stillgreater truth it may be said that Language is his master. Words seem todominate him. Alliteration tyrannises over him. Mere sound oftenbecomes his lord. He is so eloquent that whatever he touches becomesunreal. 

Let us turn to the poem on the Armada:

 The wings of the south-west wind are widened; the breath of his fervent lips, More keen than a sword's edge, fiercer than fire, falls full on the plunging ships. The pilot is he of the northward flight, their stay and their steersman he; A helmsman clothed with the tempest, and girdled with strength to constrain the sea. And the host of them trembles and quails, caught fast in his hand as a bird in the toils; For the wrath and the joy that fulfil him are mightier than man's, whom he slays and spoils. And vainly, with heart divided in sunder, and labour of wavering will, The lord of their host takes counsel with hope if haply their star shine still. 

Somehow we seem to have heard all this before. Does it come from thefact that of all the poets who ever lived Mr. Swinburne is the one who isthe most limited in imagery? It must be admitted that he is so. He haswearied us with his monotony. 'Fire' and the 'Sea' are the two wordsever on his lips. We must confess also that this shrillsinging--marvellous as it is--leaves us out of breath. Here is a passagefrom a poem called A Word with the Wind:

 Be the sunshine bared or veiled, the sky superb or shrouded, Still the waters, lax and languid, chafed and foiled, Keen and thwarted, pale and patient, clothed with fire or clouded, Vex their heart in vain, or sleep like serpents coiled. Thee they look for, blind and baffled, wan with wrath and weary, Blown for ever back by winds that rock the bird: Winds that seamews breast subdue the sea, and bid the dreary Waves be weak as hearts made sick with hope deferred. Let the clarion sound from westward, let the south bear token How the glories of thy godhead sound and shine: Bid the land rejoice to see the land-wind's broad wings broken, Bid the sea take comfort, bid the world be thine. 

Verse of this kind may be justly praised for the sustained strength andvigour of its metrical scheme. Its purely technical excellence isextraordinary. But is it more than an oratorical tour de force? Does itreally convey much? Does it charm? Could we return to it again andagain with renewed pleasure? We think not. It seems to us empty. 

Of course, we must not look to these poems for any revelation of humanlife. To be at one with the elements seems to be Mr. Swinburne's aim. Heseeks to speak with the breath of wind and wave. The roar of the fire isever in his ears. He puts his clarion to the lips of Spring and bids herblow, and the Earth wakes from her dreams and tells him her secret. Heis the first lyric poet who has tried to make an absolute surrender ofhis own personality, and he has succeeded. We hear the song, but wenever know the singer. We never even get near to him. Out of thethunder and splendour of words he himself says nothing. We have oftenhad man's interpretation of Nature; now we have Nature's interpretationof man, and she has curiously little to say. Force and Freedom form hervague message. She deafens us with her clangours. 

But Mr. Swinburne is not always riding the whirlwind and calling out ofthe depths of the sea. Romantic ballads in Border dialect have not losttheir fascination for him, and this last volume contains some verysplendid examples of this curious artificial kind of poetry. The amountof pleasure one gets out of dialect is a matter entirely of temperament. To say 'mither' instead of 'mother' seems to many the acme of romance. There are others who are not quite so ready to believe in the pathos ofprovincialisms. There is, however, no doubt of Mr. Swinburne's masteryover the form, whether the form be quite legitimate or not. The WearyWedding has the concentration and colour of a great drama, and thequaintness of its style lends it something of the power of a grotesque. The ballad of The Witch-Mother, a mediaeval Medea who slays her childrenbecause her lord is faithless, is worth reading on account of itshorrible simplicity. The Bride's Tragedy, with its strange refrain of

 In, in, out and in, Blaws the wind and whirls the whin:

The Jacobite's Exile--

 O lordly flow the Loire and Seine, And loud the dark Durance: But bonnier shine the braes of Tyne Than a' the fields of France; And the waves of Till that speak sae still Gleam goodlier where they glance:

The Tyneside Widow and A Reiver's Neck-verse are all poems of fineimaginative power, and some of them are terrible in their fierceintensity of passion. There is no danger of English poetry narrowingitself to a form so limited as the romantic ballad in dialect. It is oftoo vital a growth for that. So we may welcome Mr. Swinburne's masterlyexperiments with the hope that things which are inimitable will not beimitated. The collection is completed by a few poems on children, somesonnets, a threnody on John William Inchbold, and a lovely lyric entitledThe Interpreters. 

 In human thought have all things habitation; Our days Laugh, lower, and lighten past, and find no station That stays. But thought and faith are mightier things than time Can wrong, Made splendid once by speech, or made sublime By song. Remembrance, though the tide of change that rolls Wax hoary, Gives earth and heaven, for song's sake and the soul's, Their glory. 

Certainly, 'for song's sake' we should love Mr. Swinburne's work, cannot, indeed, help loving it, so marvellous a music-maker is he. But what ofthe soul? For the soul we must go elsewhere. 

Poems and Ballads. Third Series. By Algernon Charles Swinburne. (Chattoand Windus. )

THREE NEW POETS

(Pall Mall Gazette, July 12, 1889. )

Books of poetry by young writers are usually promissory notes that arenever met. Now and then, however, one comes across a volume that is sofar above the average that one can hardly resist the fascinatingtemptation of recklessly prophesying a fine future for its author. Sucha book Mr. Yeats's Wanderings of Oisin certainly is. Here we findnobility of treatment and nobility of subject-matter, delicacy of poeticinstinct and richness of imaginative resource. Unequal and uneven muchof the work must be admitted to be. Mr. Yeats does not try to 'out-baby'Wordsworth, we are glad to say; but he occasionally succeeds in'out-glittering' Keats, and, here and there, in his book we come acrossstrange crudities and irritating conceits. But when he is at his best heis very good. If he has not the grand simplicity of epic treatment, hehas at least something of the largeness of vision that belongs to theepical temper. He does not rob of their stature the great heroes ofCeltic mythology. He is very naive and very primitive and speaks of hisgiants with the air of a child. Here is a characteristic passage fromthe account of Oisin's return from the Island of Forgetfulness:

 And I rode by the plains of the sea's edge, where all is barren and grey, Grey sands on the green of the grasses and over the dripping trees, Dripping and doubling landward, as though they would hasten away Like an army of old men longing for rest from the moan of the seas. 

 Long fled the foam-flakes around me, the winds fled out of the vast, Snatching the bird in secret, nor knew I, embosomed apart, When they froze the cloth on my body like armour riveted fast, For Remembrance, lifting her leanness, keened in the gates of my heart. 

 Till fattening the winds of the morning, an odour of new-mown hay Came, and my forehead fell low, and my tears like berries fell down; Later a sound came, half lost in the sound of a shore far away, From the great grass-barnacle calling, and later the shore-winds brown. 

 If I were as I once was, the gold hooves crushing the sand and the shells, Coming forth from the sea like the morning with red lips murmuring a song, Not coughing, my head on my knees, and praying, and wroth with the bells, I would leave no Saint's head on his body, though spacious his lands were and strong. 

 Making way from the kindling surges, I rode on a bridle-path, Much wondering to see upon all hands, of wattle and woodwork made, Thy bell-mounted churches, and guardless the sacred cairn and the earth, And a small and feeble populace stooping with mattock and spade. 

In one or two places the music is faulty, the construction is sometimestoo involved, and the word 'populace' in the last line is ratherinfelicitous; but, when all is said, it is impossible not to feel inthese stanzas the presence of the true poetic spirit. 

A young lady who seeks for a 'song surpassing sense, ' and tries toreproduce Mr. Browning's mode of verse for our edification, may seem tobe in a somewhat parlous state. But Miss Caroline Fitz Gerald's work isbetter than her aim. Venetia Victrix is in many respects a fine poem. Itshows vigour, intellectual strength, and courage. The story is a strangeone. A certain Venetian, hating one of the Ten who had wronged him andidentifying his enemy with Venice herself, abandons his native city andmakes a vow that, rather than lift a hand for her good, he will give hissoul to Hell. As he is sailing down the Adriatic at night, his ship issuddenly becalmed and he sees a huge galley

 where sate Like counsellors on high, exempt, elate, The fiends triumphant in their fiery state, on their way to Venice. He has to choose between his own ruin and theruin of his city. After a struggle, he determines to sacrifice himselfto his rash oath. 

 I climbed aloft. My brain had grown one thought, One hope, one purpose. And I heard the hiss Of raging disappointment, loth to miss Its prey--I heard the lapping of the flame, That through the blenched figures went and came, Darting in frenzy to the devils' yell. I set that cross on high, and cried: 'To hell My soul for ever, and my deed to God! Once Venice guarded safe, let this vile clod Drift where fate will!' And then (the hideous laugh Of fiends in full possession, keen to quaff The wine of one new soul not weak with tears, Pealing like ruinous thunder in mine ears) I fell, and heard no more. The pale day broke Through lazar-windows, when once more I woke, Remembering I might no more dare to pray. 

Venetia Victrix is followed by Ophelion, a curious lyrical play whosedramatis personae consist of Night, Death, Dawn and a Scholar. It isintricate rather than musical, but some of the songs are graceful--notablyone beginning

 Lady of heaven most pure and holy, Artemis, fleet as the flying deer, Glide through the dusk like a silver shadow, Mirror thy brow in the lonely mere. 

Miss Fitz Gerald's volume is certainly worth reading. 

Mr. Richard Le Gallienne's little book, Volumes in Folio as he quaintlycalls it, is full of dainty verse and delicate fancy. Lines such as

 And lo! the white face of the dawn Yearned like a ghost's against the pane, A sobbing ghost amid the rain; Or like a chill and pallid rose Slowly upclimbing from the lawn, strike, with their fantastic choice of metaphors, a pleasing note. Atpresent Mr. Le Gallienne's muse seems to devote herself entirely to theworship of books, and Mr. Le Gallienne himself is steeped in literarytraditions, making Keats his model and seeking to reproduce something ofKeats's richness and affluence of imagery. He is keenly conscious howderivative his inspiration is:

 Verse of my own! why ask so poor a thing, When I might gather from the garden-ways Of sunny memory fragrant offering Of deathless blooms and white unwithering sprays?

 Shakspeare had given me an English rose, And honeysuckle Spenser sweet as dew, Or I had brought you from that dreamy close Keats' passion-blossom, or the mystic blue

 Star-flower of Shelley's song, or shaken gold From lilies of the Blessed Damosel, Or stolen fire from out the scarlet fold Of Swinburne's poppies. . . . 

Yet now that he has played his prelude with so sensitive and so gracefula touch, we have no doubt that he will pass to larger themes and noblersubject-matter, and fulfil the hope he expresses in this sextet:

 For if perchance some music should be mine, I would fling forth its notes like a fierce sea, To wash away the piles of tyranny, To make love free and faith unbound of creed. O for some power to fill my shrunken line, And make a trumpet of my oaten reed. 

(1) The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems. By W. B. Yeats. (KeganPaul. )

(2) Venetia Victrix. By Caroline Fitz Gerald. (Macmillan and Co. )

(3) Volumes in Folio. By Richard Le Gallienne. (Elkin Mathews. )

A CHINESE SAGE

(Speaker, February 8, 1890. )

A eminent Oxford theologian once remarked that his only objection tomodern progress was that it progressed forward instead of backward--aview that so fascinated a certain artistic undergraduate that he promptlywrote an essay upon some unnoticed analogies between the development ofideas and the movements of the common sea-crab. I feel sure the Speakerwill not be suspected even by its most enthusiastic friends of holdingthis dangerous heresy of retrogression. But I must candidly admit that Ihave come to the conclusion that the most caustic criticism of modernlife I have met with for some time is that contained in the writings ofthe learned Chuang Tzu, recently translated into the vulgar tongue by Mr. Herbert Giles, Her Majesty's Consul at Tamsui. 

The spread of popular education has no doubt made the name of this greatthinker quite familiar to the general public, but, for the sake of thefew and the over-cultured, I feel it my duty to state definitely who hewas, and to give a brief outline of the character of his philosophy. 

Chuang Tzu, whose name must carefully be pronounced as it is not written, was born in the fourth century before Christ, by the banks of the YellowRiver, in the Flowery Land; and portraits of the wonderful sage seated onthe flying dragon of contemplation may still be found on the simple tea-trays and pleasing screens of many of our most respectable suburbanhouseholds. The honest ratepayer and his healthy family have no doubtoften mocked at the dome-like forehead of the philosopher, and laughedover the strange perspective of the landscape that lies beneath him. Ifthey really knew who he was, they would tremble. For Chuang Tzu spenthis life in preaching the great creed of Inaction, and in pointing outthe uselessness of all useful things. 'Do nothing, and everything willbe done, ' was the doctrine which he inherited from his great master LaoTzu. To resolve action into thought, and thought into abstraction, washis wicked transcendental aim. Like the obscure philosopher of earlyGreek speculation, he believed in the identity of contraries; like Plato, he was an idealist, and had all the idealist's contempt for utilitariansystems; he was a mystic like Dionysius, and Scotus Erigena, and JacobBohme, and held, with them and with Philo, that the object of life was toget rid of self-consciousness, and to become the unconscious vehicle of ahigher illumination. In fact, Chuang Tzu may be said to have summed upin himself almost every mood of European metaphysical or mysticalthought, from Heraclitus down to Hegel. There was something in him ofthe Quietist also; and in his worship of Nothing he may be said to havein some measure anticipated those strange dreamers of mediaeval days who, like Tauler and Master Eckhart, adored the purum nihil and the Abyss. Thegreat middle classes of this country, to whom, as we all know, ourprosperity, if not our civilisation, is entirely due, may shrug theirshoulders over all this and ask, with a certain amount of reason, what isthe identity of contraries to them, and why they should get rid of thatself-consciousness which is their chief characteristic. But Chuang Tzuwas something more than a metaphysician and an illuminist. He sought todestroy society, as we know it, as the middle classes know it; and thesad thing is that he combines with the passionate eloquence of a Rousseauthe scientific reasoning of a Herbert Spencer. There is nothing of thesentimentalist in him. He pities the rich more than the poor, if he everpities at all, and prosperity seems to him as tragic a thing assuffering. He has nothing of the modern sympathy with failures, nor doeshe propose that the prizes should always be given on moral grounds tothose who come in last in the race. It is the race itself that heobjects to; and as for active sympathy, which has become the professionof so many worthy people in our own day, he thinks that trying to makeothers good is as silly an occupation as 'beating a drum in a forest inorder to find a fugitive. ' It is a mere waste of energy. That is all. While, as for a thoroughly sympathetic man, he is, in the eyes of ChuangTzu, simply a man who is always trying to be somebody else, and so missesthe only possible excuse for his own existence. 

Yes; incredible as it may seem, this curious thinker looked back with asigh of regret to a certain Golden Age when there were no competitiveexaminations, no wearisome educational systems, no missionaries, no pennydinners for the people, no Established Churches, no HumanitarianSocieties, no dull lectures about one's duty to one's neighbour, and notedious sermons about any subject at all. In those ideal days, he tellsus, people loved each other without being conscious of charity, orwriting to the newspapers about it. They were upright, and yet theynever published books upon Altruism. As every man kept his knowledge tohimself, the world escaped the curse of scepticism; and as every man kepthis virtues to himself, nobody meddled in other people's business. Theylived simple and peaceful lives, and were contented with such food andraiment as they could get. Neighbouring districts were in sight, and'the cocks and dogs of one could be heard in the other, ' yet the peoplegrew old and died without ever interchanging visits. There was nochattering about clever men, and no laudation of good men. Theintolerable sense of obligation was unknown. The deeds of humanity leftno trace, and their affairs were not made a burden for posterity byfoolish historians. 

In an evil moment the Philanthropist made his appearance, and broughtwith him the mischievous idea of Government. 'There is such a thing, 'says Chuang Tzu, 'as leaving mankind alone: there has never been such athing as governing mankind. ' All modes of government are wrong. Theyare unscientific, because they seek to alter the natural environment ofman; they are immoral because, by interfering with the individual, theyproduce the most aggressive forms of egotism; they are ignorant, becausethey try to spread education; they are self-destructive, because theyengender anarchy. 'Of old, ' he tells us, 'the Yellow Emperor firstcaused charity and duty to one's neighbour to interfere with the naturalgoodness of the heart of man. In consequence of this, Yao and Shun worethe hair off their legs in endeavouring to feed their people. Theydisturbed their internal economy in order to find room for artificialvirtues. They exhausted their energies in framing laws, and they werefailures. ' Man's heart, our philosopher goes on to say, may be 'forceddown or stirred up, ' and in either case the issue is fatal. Yao made thepeople too happy, so they were not satisfied. Chieh made them toowretched, so they grew discontented. Then every one began to argue aboutthe best way of tinkering up society. 'It is quite clear that somethingmust be done, ' they said to each other, and there was a general rush forknowledge. The results were so dreadful that the Government of the dayhad to bring in Coercion, and as a consequence of this 'virtuous mensought refuge in mountain caves, while rulers of state sat trembling inancestral halls. ' Then, when everything was in a state of perfect chaos, the Social Reformers got up on platforms, and preached salvation from theills that they and their system had caused. The poor Social Reformers!'They know not shame, nor what it is to blush, ' is the verdict of ChuangTzuu upon them. 

The economic question, also, is discussed by this almond-eyed sage atgreat length, and he writes about the curse of capital as eloquently asMr. Hyndman. The accumulation of wealth is to him the origin of evil. Itmakes the strong violent, and the weak dishonest. It creates the pettythief, and puts him in a bamboo cage. It creates the big thief, and setshim on a throne of white jade. It is the father of competition, andcompetition is the waste, as well as the destruction, of energy. Theorder of nature is rest, repetition, and peace. Weariness and war arethe results of an artificial society based upon capital; and the richerthis society gets, the more thoroughly bankrupt it really is, for it hasneither sufficient rewards for the good nor sufficient punishments forthe wicked. There is also this to be remembered--that the prizes of theworld degrade a man as much as the world's punishments. The age isrotten with its worship of success. As for education, true wisdom canneither be learnt nor taught. It is a spiritual state, to which he wholives in harmony with nature attains. Knowledge is shallow if we compareit with the extent of the unknown, and only the unknowable is of value. Society produces rogues, and education makes one rogue cleverer thananother. That is the only result of School Boards. Besides, of whatpossible philosophic importance can education be, when it serves simplyto make each man differ from his neighbour? We arrive ultimately at achaos of opinions, doubt everything, and fall into the vulgar habit ofarguing; and it is only the intellectually lost who ever argue. Look atHui Tzu. 'He was a man of many ideas. His works would fill five carts. But his doctrines were paradoxical. ' He said that there were feathers inan egg, because there were feathers on a chicken; that a dog could be asheep, because all names were arbitrary; that there was a moment when aswiftly-flying arrow was neither moving nor at rest; that if you took astick a foot long, and cut it in half every day, you would never come tothe end of it; and that a bay horse and a dun cow were three, becausetaken separately they were two, and taken together they were one, and oneand two made up three. 'He was like a man running a race with his ownshadow, and making a noise in order to drown the echo. He was a clevergadfly, that was all. What was the use of him?'

Morality is, of course, a different thing. It went out of fashion, saysChuang Tzu, when people began to moralise. Men ceased then to bespontaneous and to act on intuition. They became priggish andartificial, and were so blind as to have a definite purpose in life. Thencame Governments and Philanthropists, those two pests of the age. Theformer tried to coerce people into being good, and so destroyed thenatural goodness of man. The latter were a set of aggressive busybodieswho caused confusion wherever they went. They were stupid enough to haveprinciples, and unfortunate enough to act up to them. They all came tobad ends, and showed that universal altruism is as bad in its results asuniversal egotism. They 'tripped people up over charity, and fetteredthem with duties to their neighbours. ' They gushed over music, andfussed over ceremonies. As a consequence of all this, the world lost itsequilibrium, and has been staggering ever since. 

Who, then, according to Chuang Tzu, is the perfect man? And what is hismanner of life? The perfect man does nothing beyond gazing at theuniverse. He adopts no absolute position. 'In motion, he is like water. At rest, he is like a mirror. And, like Echo, he answers only when he iscalled upon. ' He lets externals take care of themselves. Nothingmaterial injures him; nothing spiritual punishes him. His mentalequilibrium gives him the empire of the world. He is never the slave ofobjective existences. He knows that, 'just as the best language is thatwhich is never spoken, so the best action is that which is never done. 'He is passive, and accepts the laws of life. He rests in inactivity, andsees the world become virtuous of itself. He does not try to 'bringabout his own good deeds. ' He never wastes himself on effort. He is nottroubled about moral distinctions. He knows that things are what theyare, and that their consequences will be what they will be. His mind isthe 'speculum of creation, ' and he is ever at peace. 

All this is of course excessively dangerous, but we must remember thatChuang Tzu lived more than two thousand years ago, and never had theopportunity of seeing our unrivalled civilisation. And yet it ispossible that, were he to come back to earth and visit us, he might havesomething to say to Mr. Balfour about his coercion and activemisgovernment in Ireland; he might smile at some of our philanthropicardours, and shake his head over many of our organised charities; theSchool Board might not impress him, nor our race for wealth stir hisadmiration; he might wonder at our ideals, and grow sad over what we haverealised. Perhaps it is well that Chuang Tzu cannot return. 

Meanwhile, thanks to Mr. Giles and Mr. Quaritch, we have his book toconsole us, and certainly it is a most fascinating and delightful volume. Chuang Tzu is one of the Darwinians before Darwin. He traces man fromthe germ, and sees his unity with nature. As an anthropologist he isexcessively interesting, and he describes our primitive arboreal ancestorliving in trees through his terror of animals stronger than himself, andknowing only one parent, the mother, with all the accuracy of a lecturerat the Royal Society. Like Plato, he adopts the dialogue as his mode ofexpression, 'putting words into other people's mouths, ' he tells us, 'inorder to gain breadth of view. ' As a story-teller he is charming. Theaccount of the visit of the respectable Confucius to the great Robber Cheis most vivid and brilliant, and it is impossible not to laugh over theultimate discomfiture of the sage, the barrenness of whose moralplatitudes is ruthlessly exposed by the successful brigand. Even in hismetaphysics, Chuang Tzu is intensely humorous. He personifies hisabstractions, and makes them act plays before us. The Spirit of theClouds, when passing eastward through the expanse of air, happened tofall in with the Vital Principle. The latter was slapping his ribs andhopping about: whereupon the Spirit of the Clouds said, 'Who are you, oldman, and what are you doing?' 'Strolling!' replied the Vital Principle, without stopping, for all activities are ceaseless. 'I want to _know_something, ' continued the Spirit of the Clouds. 'Ah!' cried the VitalPrinciple, in a tone of disapprobation, and a marvellous conversationfollows, that is not unlike the dialogue between the Sphinx and theChimera in Flaubert's curious drama. Talking animals, also, have theirplace in Chuang Tzu's parables and stories, and through myth and poetryand fancy his strange philosophy finds musical utterance. 

Of course it is sad to be told that it is immoral to be consciously good, and that doing anything is the worst form of idleness. Thousands ofexcellent and really earnest philanthropists would be absolutely thrownupon the rates if we adopted the view that nobody should be allowed tomeddle in what does not concern him. The doctrine of the uselessness ofall useful things would not merely endanger our commercial supremacy as anation, but might bring discredit upon many prosperous and serious-mindedmembers of the shop-keeping classes. What would become of our popularpreachers, our Exeter Hall orators, our drawing-room evangelists, if wesaid to them, in the words of Chuang Tzu, 'Mosquitoes will keep a manawake all night with their biting, and just in the same way this talk ofcharity and duty to one's neighbour drives us nearly crazy. Sirs, striveto keep the world to its own original simplicity, and, as the windbloweth where it listeth, so let Virtue establish itself. Wherefore thisundue energy?' And what would be the fate of governments andprofessional politicians if we came to the conclusion that there is nosuch thing as governing mankind at all? It is clear that Chuang Tzu is avery dangerous writer, and the publication of his book in English, twothousand years after his death, is obviously premature, and may cause agreat deal of pain to many thoroughly respectable and industriouspersons. It may be true that the ideal of self-culture andself-development, which is the aim of his scheme of life, and the basisof his scheme of philosophy, is an ideal somewhat needed by an age likeours, in which most people are so anxious to educate their neighboursthat they have actually no time left in which to educate themselves. Butwould it be wise to say so? It seems to me that if we once admitted theforce of any one of Chuang Tzu's destructive criticisms we should have toput some check on our national habit of self-glorification; and the onlything that ever consoles man for the stupid things he does is the praisehe always gives himself for doing them. There may, however, be a few whohave grown wearied of that strange modern tendency that sets enthusiasmto do the work of the intellect. To these, and such as these, Chuang Tzuwill be welcome. But let them only read him. Let them not talk abouthim. He would be disturbing at dinner-parties, and impossible atafternoon teas, and his whole life was a protest against platformspeaking. 'The perfect man ignores self; the divine man ignores action;the true sage ignores reputation. ' These are the principles of ChuangTzu. 

Chuang Tzu: Mystic, Moralist, and Social Reformer. Translated from theChinese by Herbert A. Giles, H. B. M. 's Consul at Tamsui. (BernardQuaritch. )

MR. PATER'S LAST VOLUME

(Speaker, March 22, 1890. )

When I first had the privilege--and I count it a very high one--ofmeeting Mr. Walter Pater, he said to me, smiling, 'Why do you alwayswrite poetry? Why do you not write prose? Prose is so much moredifficult. '

It was during my undergraduate days at Oxford; days of lyrical ardour andof studious sonnet-writing; days when one loved the exquisite intricacyand musical repetitions of the ballade, and the villanelle with itslinked long-drawn echoes and its curious completeness; days when onesolemnly sought to discover the proper temper in which a triolet shouldbe written; delightful days, in which, I am glad to say, there was farmore rhyme than reason. 

I may frankly confess now that at the time I did not quite comprehendwhat Mr. Pater really meant; and it was not till I had carefully studiedhis beautiful and suggestive essays on the Renaissance that I fullyrealised what a wonderful self-conscious art the art of English prose-writing really is, or may be made to be. Carlyle's stormy rhetoric, Ruskin's winged and passionate eloquence, had seemed to me to spring fromenthusiasm rather than from art. I do not think I knew then that evenprophets correct their proofs. As for Jacobean prose, I thought it tooexuberant; and Queen Anne prose appeared to me terribly bald, andirritatingly rational. But Mr. Pater's essays became to me 'the goldenbook of spirit and sense, the holy writ of beauty. ' They are still thisto me. It is possible, of course, that I may exaggerate about them. Icertainly hope that I do; for where there is no exaggeration there is nolove, and where there is no love there is no understanding. It is onlyabout things that do not interest one, that one can give a reallyunbiassed opinion; and this is no doubt the reason why an unbiassedopinion is always valueless. 

But I must not allow this brief notice of Mr. Pater's new volume todegenerate into an autobiography. I remember being told in America thatwhenever Margaret Fuller wrote an essay upon Emerson the printers hadalways to send out to borrow some additional capital 'I's, ' and I feel itright to accept this transatlantic warning. 

Appreciations, in the fine Latin sense of the word, is the title given byMr. Pater to his book, which is an exquisite collection of exquisiteessays, of delicately wrought works of art--some of them being almostGreek in their purity of outline and perfection of form, others mediaevalin their strangeness of colour and passionate suggestion, and all of themabsolutely modern, in the true meaning of the term modernity. For he towhom the present is the only thing that is present, knows nothing of theage in which he lives. To realise the nineteenth century one mustrealise every century that has preceded it, and that has contributed toits making. To know anything about oneself, one must know all aboutothers. There must be no mood with which one cannot sympathise, no deadmode of life that one cannot make alive. The legacies of heredity maymake us alter our views of moral responsibility, but they cannot butintensify our sense of the value of Criticism; for the true critic is hewho bears within himself the dreams and ideas and feelings of myriadgenerations, and to whom no form of thought is alien, no emotionalimpulse obscure. 

Perhaps the most interesting, and certainly the least successful, of theessays contained in the present volume is that on Style. It is the mostinteresting because it is the work of one who speaks with the highauthority that comes from the noble realisation of things noblyconceived. It is the least successful, because the subject is tooabstract. A true artist like Mr. Pater is most felicitous when he dealswith the concrete, whose very limitations give him finer freedom, whilethey necessitate more intense vision. And yet what a high ideal iscontained in these few pages! How good it is for us, in these days ofpopular education and facile journalism, to be reminded of the realscholarship that is essential to the perfect writer, who, 'being a truelover of words for their own sake, a minute and constant observer oftheir physiognomy, ' will avoid what is mere rhetoric, or ostentatiousornament, or negligent misuse of terms, or ineffective surplusage, andwill be known by his tact of omission, by his skilful economy of means, by his selection and self-restraint, and perhaps above all by thatconscious artistic structure which is the expression of mind in style. Ithink I have been wrong in saying that the subject is too abstract. InMr. Pater's hands it becomes very real to us indeed, and he shows us how, behind the perfection of a man's style, must lie the passion of a man'ssoul. 

As one passes to the rest of the volume, one finds essays on Wordsworthand on Coleridge, on Charles Lamb and on Sir Thomas Browne, on some ofShakespeare's plays and on the English kings that Shakespeare fashioned, on Dante Rossetti, and on William Morris. As that on Wordsworth seems tobe Mr. Pater's last work, so that on the singer of the Defence ofGuenevere is certainly his earliest, or almost his earliest, and it isinteresting to mark the change that has taken place in his style. Thischange is, perhaps, at first sight not very apparent. In 1868 we findMr. Pater writing with the same exquisite care for words, with the samestudied music, with the same temper, and something of the same mode oftreatment. But, as he goes on, the architecture of the style becomesricher and more complex, the epithet more precise and intellectual. Occasionally one may be inclined to think that there is, here and there, a sentence which is somewhat long, and possibly, if one may venture tosay so, a little heavy and cumbersome in movement. But if this be so, itcomes from those side-issues suddenly suggested by the idea in itsprogress, and really revealing the idea more perfectly; or from thosefelicitous after-thoughts that give a fuller completeness to the centralscheme, and yet convey something of the charm of chance; or from a desireto suggest the secondary shades of meaning with all their accumulatingeffect, and to avoid, it may be, the violence and harshness of toodefinite and exclusive an opinion. For in matters of art, at any rate, thought is inevitably coloured by emotion, and so is fluid rather thanfixed, and, recognising its dependence upon moods and upon the passion offine moments, will not accept the rigidity of a scientific formula or atheological dogma. The critical pleasure, too, that we receive fromtracing, through what may seem the intricacies of a sentence, the workingof the constructive intelligence, must not be overlooked. As soon as wehave realised the design, everything appears clear and simple. After atime, these long sentences of Mr. Pater's come to have the charm of anelaborate piece of music, and the unity of such music also. 

I have suggested that the essay on Wordsworth is probably the most recentbit of work contained in this volume. If one might choose between somuch that is good, I should be inclined to say it is the finest also. Theessay on Lamb is curiously suggestive; suggestive, indeed, of a somewhatmore tragic, more sombre figure, than men have been wont to think of inconnection with the author of the Essays of Elia. It is an interestingaspect under which to regard Lamb, but perhaps he himself would have hadsome difficulty in recognising the portrait given of him. He had, undoubtedly, great sorrows, or motives for sorrow, but he could consolehimself at a moment's notice for the real tragedies of life by readingany one of the Elizabethan tragedies, provided it was in a folio edition. The essay on Sir Thomas Browne is delightful, and has the strange, personal, fanciful charm of the author of the Religio Medici, Mr. Pateroften catching the colour and accent and tone of whatever artist, or workof art, he deals with. That on Coleridge, with its insistence on thenecessity of the cultivation of the relative, as opposed to the absolutespirit in philosophy and in ethics, and its high appreciation of thepoet's true position in our literature, is in style and substance a veryblameless work. Grace of expression and delicate subtlety of thought andphrase, characterise the essays on Shakespeare. But the essay onWordsworth has a spiritual beauty of its own. It appeals, not to theordinary Wordsworthian with his uncritical temper, and his grossconfusion of ethical and aesthetical problems, but rather to those whodesire to separate the gold from the dross, and to reach at the trueWordsworth through the mass of tedious and prosaic work that bears hisname, and that serves often to conceal him from us. The presence of analien element in Wordsworth's art is, of course, recognised by Mr. Pater, but he touches on it merely from the psychological point of view, pointing out how this quality of higher and lower moods gives the effectin his poetry 'of a power not altogether his own, or under his control';a power which comes and goes when it wills, 'so that the old fancy whichmade the poet's art an enthusiasm, a form of divine possession, seemsalmost true of him. ' Mr. Pater's earlier essays had their purpureipanni, so eminently suitable for quotation, such as the famous passage onMona Lisa, and that other in which Botticelli's strange conception of theVirgin is so strangely set forth. From the present volume it isdifficult to select any one passage in preference to another as speciallycharacteristic of Mr. Pater's treatment. This, however, is worth quotingat length. It contains a truth eminently suitable for our age:

 That the end of life is not action but contemplation--_being_ as distinct from _doing_--a certain disposition of the mind: is, in some shape or other, the principle of all the higher morality. In poetry, in art, if you enter into their true spirit at all, you touch this principle in a measure; these, by their sterility, are a type of beholding for the mere joy of beholding. To treat life in the spirit of art is to make life a thing in which means and ends are identified: to encourage such treatment, the true moral significance of art and poetry. Wordsworth, and other poets who have been like him in ancient or more recent times, are the masters, the experts, in this art of impassioned contemplation. Their work is not to teach lessons, or enforce rules, or even to stimulate us to noble ends, but to withdraw the thoughts for a while from the mere machinery of life, to fix them, with appropriate emotions, on the spectacle of those great facts in man's existence which no machinery affects, 'on the great and universal passions of men, the most general and interesting of their occupations, and the entire world of nature'--on 'the operations of the elements and the appearances of the visible universe, on storm and sunshine, on the revolutions of the seasons, on cold and heat, on loss of friends and kindred, on injuries and resentments, on gratitude and hope, on fear and sorrow. ' To witness this spectacle with appropriate emotions is the aim of all culture; and of these emotions poetry like Wordsworth's is a great nourisher and stimulant. He sees nature full of sentiment and excitement; he sees men and women as parts of nature, passionate, excited, in strange grouping and connection with the grandeur and beauty of the natural world:--images, in his own words, 'of men suffering, amid awful forms and powers. '

Certainly the real secret of Wordsworth has never been better expressed. After having read and reread Mr. Pater's essay--for it requiresre-reading--one returns to the poet's work with a new sense of joy andwonder, and with something of eager and impassioned expectation. Andperhaps this might be roughly taken as the test or touchstone of thefinest criticism. 

Finally, one cannot help noticing the delicate instinct that has gone tofashion the brief epilogue that ends this delightful volume. Thedifference between the classical and romantic spirits in art has often, and with much over-emphasis, been discussed. But with what a light suretouch does Mr. Pater write of it! How subtle and certain are hisdistinctions! If imaginative prose be really the special art of thiscentury, Mr. Pater must rank amongst our century's most characteristicartists. In certain things he stands almost alone. The age has producedwonderful prose styles, turbid with individualism, and violent withexcess of rhetoric. But in Mr. Pater, as in Cardinal Newman, we find theunion of personality with perfection. He has no rival in his own sphere, and he has escaped disciples. And this, not because he has not beenimitated, but because in art so fine as his there is something that, inits essence, is inimitable. 

Appreciations, with an Essay on Style. By Walter Pater, Fellow ofBrasenose College. (Macmillan and Co. )

PRIMAVERA

(Pall Mall Gazette, May 24, 1890. )

In the summer term Oxford teaches the exquisite art of idleness, one ofthe most important things that any University can teach, and possibly asthe first-fruits of the dreaming in grey cloister and silent garden, which either makes or mars a man, there has just appeared in that lovelycity a dainty and delightful volume of poems by four friends. These newyoung singers are Mr. Laurence Binyon, who has just gained the Newdigate;Mr. Manmohan Ghose, a young Indian of brilliant scholarship and highliterary attainments who gives some culture to Christ Church; Mr. StephenPhillips, whose recent performance of the Ghost in Hamlet at the GlobeTheatre was so admirable in its dignity and elocution; and Mr. ArthurCripps, of Trinity. Particular interest attaches naturally to Mr. Ghose's work. Born in India, of purely Indian parentage, he has beenbrought up entirely in England, and was educated at St. Paul's School, and his verses show us how quick and subtle are the intellectualsympathies of the Oriental mind, and suggest how close is the bond ofunion that may some day bind India to us by other methods than those ofcommerce and military strength. 

There is something charming in finding a young Indian using our languagewith such care for music and words as Mr. Ghose does. Here is one of hissongs:

 Over thy head, in joyful wanderings Through heaven's wide spaces, free, Birds fly with music in their wings; _And from the blue, rough sea The fishes flash and leap_; There is a life of loveliest things O'er thee, so fast asleep. 

 In the deep West the heavens grow heavenlier, Eve after eve; _and still The glorious stars remember to appear_; The roses on the hill Are fragrant as before: Only thy face, of all that's dear, I shall see nevermore!

It has its faults. It has a great many faults. But the lines we haveset in italics are lovely. The temper of Keats, the moods of MatthewArnold, have influenced Mr. Ghose, and what better influence could abeginner have? Here are some stanzas from another of Mr. Ghose's poems:

 Deep-shaded will I lie, and deeper yet In night, where not a leaf its neighbour knows; Forget the shining of the stars, forget The vernal visitation of the rose; And, far from all delights, prepare my heart's repose. 

 'O crave not silence thou! too soon, too sure, Shall Autumn come, and through these branches weep: Some birds shall cease, and flowers no more endure; And thou beneath the mould unwilling creep, And silent soon shalt be in that eternal sleep. 

 'Green still it is, where that fair goddess strays; Then follow, till around thee all be sere. Lose not a vision of her passing face; Nor miss the sound of her soft robes, that here Sweep over the wet leaves of the fast-falling year. '

The second line is very beautiful, and the whole shows culture and tasteand feeling. Mr. Ghose ought some day to make a name in our literature. 

Mr. Stephen Phillips has a more solemn classical Muse. His best work ishis Orestes:

 Me in far lands did Justice call, cold queen Among the dead, who, after heat and haste At length have leisure for her steadfast voice, That gathers peace from the great deeps of hell. She call'd me, saying: I heard a cry by night! Go thou, and question not; within thy halls My will awaits fulfilment. 

 . . . . . . 

 And she lies there, My mother! ay, my mother now; O hair That once I play'd with in these halls! O eyes That for a moment knew me as I came, And lighten'd up, and trembled into love; The next were darkened by my hand! Ah me! Ye will not look upon me in that world. Yet thou, perchance, art happier, if thou go'st Into some land of wind and drifting leaves, To sleep without a star; but as for me, Hell hungers, and the restless Furies wait. 

Milton, and the method of Greek tragedy are Mr. Phillips's influences, and again we may say, what better influences could a young singer have?His verse is dignified, and has distinction. 

* * * * *

Mr. Cripps is melodious at times, and Mr. Binyon, Oxford's latestLaureate, shows us in his lyrical ode on Youth that he can handle adifficult metre dexterously, and in this sonnet that he can catch thesweet echoes that sleep in the sonnets of Shakespeare:

 I cannot raise my eyelids up from sleep, But I am visited with thoughts of you; Slumber has no refreshment half so deep As the sweet morn, that wakes my heart anew. 

 I cannot put away life's trivial care, But you straightway steal on me with delight: My purest moments are your mirror fair; My deepest thought finds you the truth most bright

 You are the lovely regent of my mind, The constant sky to the unresting sea; Yet, since 'tis you that rule me, I but find A finer freedom in such tyranny. 

 Were the world's anxious kingdoms govern'd so, Lost were their wrongs, and vanish'd half their woe!

On the whole Primavera is a pleasant little book, and we are glad towelcome it. It is charmingly 'got up, ' and undergraduates might read itwith advantage during lecture hours. 

Primavera: Poems. By Four Authors. (Oxford: B. H. Blackwell. )

INDEX OF AUTHORS AND BOOKS REVIEWED

AITCHISON, JAMES: The Chronicle of Mites

ANONYMOUS: An Author's LoveAnnals of the Life of ShakespeareMiss Bayle's RomanceRachelSturm und DrangThe Cross and the GrailThe Judgment of the CityWarring Angels

ARMSTRONG, GEORGE FRANCIS: Stories of Wicklow

ARNOLD, SIR EDWIN: With Sa'di in the Garden

ASHBY-STERRY, J. : The Lazy Minstrel

AUSTIN, ALFRED: Days of the YearLove's Widowhood

Author of Flitters, Tatters, and the Counsellor: Ismay's Children

Author of Lucy: Tiff

Author of Mademoiselle Mori: A Child of the RevolutionUnder a Cloud

Author of The White Africans: AEonial

BALZAC, HONORE DE: Cesar BirotteauThe Duchess of Langeais and Other Stories

BARKER, JOHN THOMAS: The Pilgrimage of Memory

BARR, AMELIA: A Daughter of Fife

BARRETT, FRANK: The Great Hesper

BAUCHE, EMILE: A Statesman's Love

BAYLISS, WYKE: The Enchanted Island

BEAUFORT, RAPHAEL LEDOS DE: Letters of George Sand

BELLAIRS, LADY: Gossips with Girls and Maidens

BLUNT, WILFRID SCAWEN: In Vinculis

BOISSIER, GASTON: Nouvelles Promenades Archeologiques

BOWEN, SIR CHARLES: Virgil in English Verse. Eclogues and AEneid I. -VI. 

BOWLING, E. W. : Sagittulae

BRODIE, E. H. : Lyrics of the Sea

BROUGHTON, RHODA: Betty's Visions

BROWNE, PHYLLIS: Mrs. Somerville and Mary Carpenter

BUCHAN, ALEXANDER: Joseph and His Brethren

BUCHANAN, ROBERT: That Winter Night

BURNS, DAWSON: Oliver Cromwell

CAINE, HALL: Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge

CAIRNS, WILLIAM: A Day after the Pair

CALDECOTT, RANDOLPH: Gleanings from the Graphic

CAMERON, MRS. HENRY LOVETT: A Life's Mistake

CARNARVON, EARL OF: The Odyssey of Homer. Books I. -XII. 

CARPENTER, EDWARD: Chants of Labour

CATTY, CHARLES: Poems in the Modern Spirit

CESARESCO, COUNTESS EVELYN MARTINENGO: Essays in the Study of Folk-Songs

CHAPMAN, ELIZABETH RACHEL: The New Purgatory

CHETWYND, HON. MRS. HENRY: Mrs. Dorriman

CHRISTIAN, H. R. H. PRINCESS: Memoirs of Wilhelmine, Margravine ofBaireuth

COCKLE, J. : Guilt (Mullner)

COLE, ALAN: Embroidery and Lace (Ernest Lefebure)

COLERIDGE, HON. STEPHEN: Demetrius

COLLIER, HON. JOHN: A Manual of Oil Painting

COLVIN, SIDNEY: Keats

CONWAY, HUGH: A Cardinal Sin

COOPER, ELISE: The Queen's Innocent

CORKRAN, ALICE: Margery Morton's GirlhoodMeg's Friend

CRAIK, MRS. : Poems

CRANE, WALTER: Flora's Feast

CRAWFORD, JOHN MARTIN: The Kalevala, the Epic Poem of Finland

CUMBERLAND, STUART: The Vasty Deep

CURTIS, ELLA: A Game of Chance

CURZON, G. : Delamere

DALZIEL, GEORGE: Pictures in the Fire

DAVIS, CORA M. : Immortelles

DAY, RICHARD: Poems

DENMAN, HON. G. : The Story of the Kings of Rome in Verse

DENNING, JOHN RENTON: Poems and Songs

DILKE, LADY: Art in the Modern State

DIXON, CONSTANCE E. : The Chimneypiece of Bruges

DOBELL, MRS. HORACE: In the Watches of the Night

DOUDNEY, SARAH: Under False Colours

DOVETON, F. B. : Sketches in Prose and Verse

DUFFY, BELLA: Life of Madame de Stael

DURANT, HELOISE: Dante: a Dramatic Poem

DYER, REV. A. SAUNDERS: The Poems of Madame de la Mothe Guyon

EDMONDS, E. M. : Greek Lays, Idylls, Legends, etc. Mary Myles

EVANS, W. : Caesar Borgia

EVELYN, JOHN: Life of Mrs. Godolphin

FANE, VIOLET: Helen Davenant

FENN, GEORGE MANVILLE: A Bag of DiamondsThe Master of the Ceremonies

FIELD, MICHAEL: Canute the Great

FITZ GERALD, CAROLINE: Venetia Victrix

FOSKET, EDWARD: Poems

FOSTER, DAVID SKAATS: Rebecca the Witch

FOUR AUTHORS: Primavera

FROUDE, J, A. : The Two Chiefs of Dunboy

FURLONG, ATHERTON: Echoes of Memory

GALLENGA, A. : Jenny Jennet

GIBERNE, AGNES: Ralph Hardcastle's Will

GILES, HERBERT A: Chuang Tzu

GLENESSA: The Discovery

GOODCHILD, JOHN A. : Somnia Medici. Second Series

GORDON, ADAM LINDSAY: Poems

GRANT, JOHN CAMERON: Vanclin

GRAVES, A. P. : Father O'Flynn and Other Irish Lyrics

GRIFFIN, EDWIN ELLIS: Vortigern and Rowena

GRIFFITHS, WILLIAM: Sonnets and Other Poems

HAMILTON, IAN: The Ballad of Hadji

HARDINGE, W. M. : The Willow Garth

HARDY, A. J. : How to be Happy Though Married

HARRISON, CLIFFORD: In Hours of Leisure

HARTE, BRET: Cressy

HAYES, ALFRED: David Westren

HEARTSEASE: God's Garden

HENLEY, WILLIAM ERNEST: A Book of Verses

HEYWOOD, J. C. : Salome

HOLE, W. G. : Procris

HOPKINS, TIGHE: 'Twixt Love and Duty

HOUSTON, MRS. : A Heart on Fire

HUNT, MRS. ALFRED: That Other Person

IRWIN, H. C. : Rhymes and Renderings

KEENE, H. E. : Verses: Translated and Original

KELLY, JAMES: Poems

K. E. V. : The Circle of SaintsThe Circle of Seasons

KINGSFORD, DR. ANNA. : Dreams and Dream-Stories

KNIGHT, JOSEPH: Life of Dante Gabriel Rossetti

KNIGHT, WILLIAM: Wordsworthiana

LAFFAN, MRS. DE COURCY: A Song of Jubilee

LANGRIDGE, REV. FREDERICK: Poor Folks' Lives

LAUDER, SIR THOMAS: The Wolfe of Badenoch

LEE, MARGARET: Faithful and Unfaithful

LE GALLIENNE, RICHARD: Volumes in Folio

LEVY, AMY: The Romance of a Shop

LINDSAY, LADY: Caroline

LINTON, W. J. : Poems and Translations

LLOYD, J. SALE: Scamp

LYALL, EDNA: In the Golden Days

MACEWEN, CONSTANCE: Soap

MACK, ROBERT ELLICE: Treasures of Art and Song

MACKENZIE, GEORGE: Highland Daydreams

MACQUOID, KATHERINE S. : Louisa

MAHAFFY, J. P. : Greek Life and ThoughtThe Principles of the Art of Conversation

MARTIN, FRANCES: Life of Elizabeth Gilbert

MARZIALS, FRANK T. : Life of Charles Dickens

MASSON, GUSTAVE: George Sand (Elme Caro)

MATTHEWS, BRANDER: Pen and Ink

MCKIM, JOSEPH: Poems

MOLESWORTH, MRS. : A Christmas PosyThe Third Miss St. Quentin

MONTGOMERY, FLORENCE: The Fisherman's Daughter

MORINE, GEORGE: Poems

MORRIS, WILLIAM: A Tale of the House of the WolfingsThe Odyssey of Homer done into English Verse

MOULTON, LOUISE CHANDLER: Ourselves and Our Neighbours

MULHOLLAND, ROSA: GianettaMarcella Grace

MUNSTER, LADY: Dorinda

NADEN, CONSTANCE: A Modern Apostle

NASH, CHARLES: The Story of the Cross

NESBIT, E. : Lays and LegendsLeaves of Life

NOEL, HON. RODEN: Essays on Poetry and Poets

NOEL, LADY AUGUSTA: Hithersea Mere

OLIPHANT, MRS. : Makers of Venice

OLIVER, PEN: All But

OUIDA: Guilderoy

OWEN, EVELYN: Driven Home

OXONIENSIS: Juvenal in Piccadilly

PATER, WALTER: Appreciations, with an Essay on StyleImaginary Portraits

PEACOCK, THOMAS BOWER: Poems of the Plain and Songs of the Solitudes

PERKS, MRS. J. HARTLEY: From Heather Hills

PFEIFFER, EMILY: Women and Work

PHILLIMORE, MISS: Studies in Italian Literature

PIERCE, J. : Stanzas and Sonnets

PIMLICO, LORD: The Excellent Mystery

PLEYDELL-BOUVERIE, EDWARD OLIVER: J. S. ; or, Trivialities

PRESTON, HARRIET WATERS: A Year in Eden

PREVOST, FRANCIS: Fires of Green Wood

QUILTER, HARRY: Sententiae Artis

RAFFALOVICH, MARK ANDRE: Tuberose and Meadowsweet

RISTORI, MADAME: Etudes et Souvenirs

RITCHIE, DAVID: Darwinism and Politics

ROBERTSON, ERIC S. : Life of Henry Wadsworth LongfellowThe Children of the Poets

ROBERTSON, J. LOGIE: Poems by Allan Ramsay

ROBINS, G. M. : Keep My Secret

ROBINSON, A. MARY F. : Poems, Ballads, and a Garden Play

ROBINSON, MABEL: The Plan of Campaign

RODD, RENNELL: The Unknown Madonna

ROSS, JAMES: Seymour's InheritanceThe Wind and Six Sonnets

ROSS, JANET: Three Generations of English Women

ROSSETTI, WILLIAM MICHAEL: Life of John Keats

RUETE, PRINCESS EMILY: Memoirs of an Arabian Princess

SAFFORD, MARY J. : Aphrodite (Ernst Eckstein)

SAINTSBURY, GEORGE: George Borrow

SARASVATI, PUNDITA RAMABAI: The High-Caste Hindu Woman

SCHWARTZ, J. M. W. : Nivalis

SHARP, ISAAC: Saul of Tarsus

SHARP, MRS. WILLIAM: Women's Voices

SHARP, WILLIAM: Romantic Ballads and Poems of Phantasy

SHERIDAN, RICHARD BRINSLEY: Here's to the Maiden of Bashful Fifteen

SHORE, ARABELLA: Dante for Beginners

SKIPSEY, JOSEPH: Carols from the Coal Fields

SLADEN, DOUGLAS B. W. : Australian Poets, 1788-1888

SMITH, ALEXANDER SKENE: Holiday Recreations

SOMERSET, LORD HENRY: Songs of Adieu

SPEIGHT, T. W. : A Barren Title

STAPFER, PAUL: Moliere et Shakespeare

STILLMAN, W. J. : On the Track of Ulysses

STOKES, MARGARET: Early Christian Art in Ireland

STREETS, FAUCET: A Marked Man

STUTFIELD, HUGH: El Magreb: Twelve Hundred Miles' Ride through Morocco

SWINBURNE, ALGERNON CHARLES: Poems and Ballads. Third Series

SYMONDS, JOHN ADDINGTON: Ben JonsonRenaissance in Italy: The Catholic Reaction

THORNTON, CYRUS: Voices of the Street

TODHUNTER, JOHN: The Banshee

TOMSON, GRAHAM R. : The Bird Bride

TOYNBEE, WILLIAM: A Selection from the Songs of De Beranger in EnglishVerse

TURNER, C. GLADSTONE: Errata

TWO TRAMPS: Low Down

TYLOR, LOUIS: Chess: A Christmas Masque

TYRRELL, CHRISTINA: Her Son (E. Werner)

VEITCH, JOHN: The Feeling for Nature in Scottish Poetry

VEITCH, SOPHIE: James Hepburn

VON LAUER, BARONESS: The Master of Tanagra (Ernst von Wildenbruch)

WALFORD, MRS. : Four Biographies from Blackwood

WALWORTH, REV. CLARENCE A. : Andiatorochte

WANDERER: Dinners and Dishes

WHISHAW, FREDERICK: Injury and Insult (Fedor Dostoieffski)

WHITMAN, WALT: November Boughs

WILLIAMS, F. HARALD: Women Must Weep

WILLIAMSON, DAVID R. : Poems of Nature and Life

WILLIS, E. COOPER: Tales and Legends in Verse

WILLS, W. G. : Melchior

WILMOT, A. : The Poetry of South Africa

WINTER, JOHN STRANGE: That Imp

WOODS, MARGARET L. : A Village Tragedy

WOTTON, MABEL: Word Portraits of Famous Writers

YEATS, W. B. : Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry

The Wanderings of Oisin

YONGE, CHARLOTTE M. , and others: Astray

Footnotes:

{119} See A 'Jolly' Art Critic, page 112. 

{189} Shairp was Professor of Poetry at Oxford in Wilde's undergraduatedays. 

{198} The Margravine of Baireuth and Voltaire. (David Stott, 1888. )

{289} February 1888. 

{334a} September 1888. 

{334b} See The Picture of Dorian Gray, chapter XI. , page 222. 

{374} The Queen, December 8, 1888. 

{411} From Lady Wilde's Ancient Legends of Ireland. 

{437} See page 406. 

{452} See Australian Poets, page 370.