CURRENT LITERATURE.
GIFT-BOOBS, ANNUALS, ETC.
Illustrated Poems. By Oliver Wendell Holmes. (Macmillan and Co.)—This is in every way one of the best gift-books of the year. Twenty-nine poems have been chosen for the purpose of this volume; and we need not say to any one who knows Mr. Holmes's work they are of remarkable merit. If they do not reach the highest range of poetry, there is an exquisite grace and literary tact, so to speak, about them which puts them in a very high place. Among the poetcs minores, using the phrase without any suspicion of disparage- ment in it, Mr. Holmes holds a high position. In this volume we have both the humorous and the pathetic; and it is not easy to say which we admire the more. And his work has been most elaborately and worthily illustrated. The illustrations, great and small, number between seventy and eighty. For a frontispiece we have a capital portrait of the poet, etched by Mr. S. A. Schoff.
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