The Tragedy of Israel: King Saul, King David, King Solomon.

By Professor G. F. Armstrong. (Longmans.)—These three volumes, the first of which appeared in 1872, the second in 1874, and the third in the course of last year, have, we may assure the author, been carefully read, and even anxiously considered. He must not, then, take it to be a proof of neglect if we now pass them by with a brief notice. It is really painful to pass a criticism which must be mainly hostile on a poem which shows so many proofs of literary power and conscientious work. Quite uncommon mastery of language and much melody of versification distinguish it. For energy of rhetoric, for the really poetical beauty of the lyrical portions, for the richness of imagery which adorns, even over-adorns it throughout, it takes high rank among the poems of the present day. But to our view, the conception of the whole seems radically wrong, because quite alien to Hebrew thought. The characters, which have a most Byronic resemblance to each other, and the language which they use, are modern to the last degree. We shall quote one passage in justification of this criticism. No reader can fail to admire it, but can any one imagine it in the mouth of Saul?—

. Aha, aka! ay. ay! lift ever hands

To me reproachful! I am not your God. I cursed you not with life, nor compassed you With failure. Up to Him, and reason crave

Why ye are hungered, why dark death, disease, Anguish and fear afflict you! He it was

Who, with fair promises of bliss, enticed

Your fathers out of Egypt. Forty years He led them through hot sands and herbless wastes,

With ruinous horrible temptations proved, Betrayed, and trampled. Did they find, poor souls,

Their land of longing? Weakly children, born Of wailing mothers starved in tracts of drought, With stroke on stroke beat outs gory path

Across the rocks and fires; and found at last A little streak of barren thorny field, 'Mixt desert sea and desert sand, upheaved

Among grey hills, and watered with faint streams

Now sucked away with summer, and now swollen

With ruin of their toil; and girdled hard

'with foes on all sides round, brave, terrible, In arms more skilled, in union more compact, To foil their purpose, waste them, spoil, and slay. And you this little vexed inheritance Behold He lendeth, with its swarm of ills! Why do ye open fearful eyes at me,

Why curse me for your griefs, who bear more grief A thousandfold, long grieving for you all, And impotent to help? Ha! ask of Him,

Or ask His prophets, or His priests,—His priests, Who know His heart, why I, a stricken soul, Sick, purblind, mad, am set to rule your lives, And He to cross me ruling?"

We had noted others for comment, but it seems to us better, and more respectful to intellectual ability which we heartily admire, but which we believe to have been in this case quite wrongly employed, not to pursue the criticism any further. We had the pleasure of speaking well of " Ugone," Mr. Armstrong's previous work, and we hope to find him hereafter achieving with a congenial subject a really great success.