CURRENT LITERATURE.
Merry England, May, 1883. (Publishing Office, 44 Essex Street, Strand.) —This new magazine is, at all events, well edited, and the opening article, on "The Young England Party," by Mr. Saintsbury, is extremely well written. He ignores, however,
the leading defect of the Young England Party, that while it adopted good secondary reforms, it opposed all those substantial primary reforms without which the good secondary reforms would have been of no use. It tried to feed the hungry masses on whipped-cream and tipsy-cake. The etching of Mr. Disraeli addressing the House of Commons is admirable. The little tale called "Miss Martha's Beg" is a very skilful and touching one, and Mr. Blackmore's quaint verses on "The Blackbird" are interesting and original. So are the verses—which we extract—on "Primrose Day," which have a flavour in them of Coventry Patmore, though we object to the line "That unappropriated yet," as the most prosy we have seen in verse for many a day :—
" PRIMROSE DAY.
Why dedicate the primrose lowly To this proud Pillar of the State?
In fields of asphodel His shadow flits—we know it well. 1 he amaranth and moly Beseem him wholly.. A bolder flower and more complex Will better mate his mind ornate, His affluent fame, Than this which, timorous, decks Our April fields, and flecks Our April forests with faint flame.
But even as when The Seer passed out of sight of men, And people cried What flower shall shroud him 1' Nature's self replied 'Take ye the pale primrose That, unappropriated yet,
(With the meek violet—
Imperial chosen !) blows In his beloved moods at Hughenden
So says our England at this hour
Of him who gave to her his dower Of strange romance and effort strong, And purpose that outdid his power, And service half-a-century long : 'He was not of our clime nor race ; The Orient owned his speech and face; His mind was Baste, n ae his mien:* Yet, since he served our England thus, And won the worship of our Queen, Henceforth we hold him one of us In thought, in feeling, and in fame, By linking our familiar flower For ever with his name."
On the whole, this magazine promises to be a social success.
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