16 JULY 1881, Page 24

Songs of a Worker. By Arthur O'Shaughnessy. (Chatto and Windus.)—The

poems included in this volume were written by Mr. O'Shaughnessy during the two years which preceded his early death, and the melancholy by which many of them are pervaded is, we are told, to be attributed to the fact that they were written in the shadow of a heavy personal bereavement. In general character they resemble the writer's earlier work ; but they seem to us to want the spontaneity and lyrical ardour of some tif the poems in "Music and Moonlight," and to diffuse a more recognisable odour of the lamp. As Mr. Shaughnessy was always regarded as a member of the extreme msthetic school, the writer of the brief preface thinks it well to give us his own view of his artistic position. "I have been represented," said he, "as saying, with Baudelaire, Art for Art,' and laying my- self open to all the nufavonrable limitations which that dictum is supposed to imply. Truly, I think that a little Art for Art' has already done a great deal of good in England, and that a little more is needed, and would be equally beneficial. But with Victor Hugo, I do not say Art for Art,' but 'Art for humanity,' and my meaning is that Art is good,—is an incalculable gain to mall; but art, in itself equally perfect, which grows with humanity, and can assist humanity in growing, is still better." This sounds well, but the fact remains that Mr. O'Shaughnessy's poems, beautiful as many of them are, suggest Bandelaire and Art mach more strongly than Hugo and Humanity.