Realism and Romans, and other Essays. By Henry MacArthur. (R.
W. Hunter, Edinburgh.)—Mr. MacArthur died in his twenty-fifth year, after an academical career (at Edinburgh) of great distinction. His friends have selected for publication seven critical essays and a poem on Robert Louis Stevenson. Six of the essays were either prize compositions or papers read before literary societies ; one on " Robert Ferguson" (a Scotch poet, as short-lived as Henry MacArthur himself), was published in the Scots Magazine, as was the elegy on Stevenson. All have been published, we are told, without any editing. They leave on the reader an impression of very great ability in the writer. He evidently had very clear and definite judgments on literary questions, and had the art of expressing them with much force and felicity. His essay on " Swinburne " may be taken as an excellent example of his manner. He takes occasion of his subject to make a very true division of poets into classes. In the first we find both form and thought supremely good; in the other two either one or the other predominates. Browning, for in- stance, exhibits predominant thought; Swinburne predominant form. Proceeding to estimate the value of Mr. Swinburne's prose work, he makes use of the very happy expression, "He runs up too broad a canvas for the wind of his thought to fill." He is right also in observing the poet's want of humour. "I remember," he says, " only one stroke of humour in all his books, and that quite an unconscious one." when Mr. Swinburne describes himself as desiring " above all things to preserve in all things the golden mean of scrupulous moderation." The poem on Stevenson is fine, though it has a weak line here and there. The conclusion runs thus
gamy and radiant spirit! that could thus Transmute to gold the leaden ore of sorrow, Distil from bitter herbs a draught of jay, And like a garland wear a crown of thorns.
As some rich-freighted bark, beset by waves Crested with cruel foam, when clouds lour dark And all the sky is waste and void of stare, Undaunted holds her darkling way, and rides Erect, and to the wished-for haven brings Her treasure safe through storm and stress of sass, So through life's stoma he passed, with bead held high And mind attuned to gladness, and at last Dropped anchor in the peaceful port of Death:*
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