19 SEPTEMBER 1925, Page 27

THE OLYMPIAN CATASTROPHE. By Sir Arthur Gorges, SPENSER, by mention,

has saved the name of this friend of Essex, Ralegh and Bacon from envious oblivion, and the publication, for the first time, of the worthy Knight's alarms

in verse has an historic, rather than poetic, interest. To ' confess truth, his elabOrate classical allegory, in the early Elizabethan manner, is ponderous enough and its bucolics are dull ; yet even Sir Arthur, like so many of his gallant con- temporaries, who could " overflow you a score of sonnets at a sitting," comes to grandeur and concludes with an invocation To His Entombed Boclve " (" Sume for thy sake proud Monumets will frame ") that has almost the golden sound of Shakespeare himself.