Collected Poems of Charlotte Mew. (Gerald Duckworth. 10s. 6d.) THE
publication of Charlotte Mew's col- lected poems with a memoir by Alida Monro brings a whiff of Georgian air into an era that has almost forgotten that vague fragrance. Miss Monro recalls for us the impression made by the first appearance of The Farmer's Bride in the Nation, but poetry readers today are unlikely to be shaken to their depths by these sincere, but often banal, verses. At best, the success is one of period stuff, read, for instance, just because it is not Edward Thomas. What are we to think of a poem ending : The soft young down of her, the brown, The brown of her—her eyes, her hair, her hair l It is kinder not to say. Charlotte Mew remains a stage in the pilgrimage from the Pre-Raphaelites to Eliot, and anyone wish- ing to relive memories of that trek to the serious could not do better than to read Miss Monro's memoir. This chapter of literary history is the most striking part of
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