2 APRIL 1864, Page 24

CURRENT LITERATURE.

Lovelace's Poetical Works. By W. Carew Hazlitt, barrister-at-law. (John Russell Smith.)—A careful and scholarly edition of*vblume of poems which, perhaps, is scarcely worth it. Lovelace was a careless writer, and even in the two or three good songs which are to be found in this volume, the last stanza is commonly the only one worth much, as witness the well-known poems — " To Lucasta. Going to the Warres " (p. 26), and "To Althea. From Prison (p. 117). His reputation is chiefly due to the spurious sentiment with which certain minds invest a poetical cavalier, who squandered a good estate in sumptuous living and fighting for King Charles, and died in comparative poverty. Mr. Hazlitt has given a not very well arranged biography, and notes which are often unnecessarily long and learned. But he has taken commendable pains with the text, though we think it would have been better to print the received text unaltered and put his emendations in the notes, instead of the emends, tions in the text and the old readings in the notes. Surely the follow- ing correction is wrong. In the poem called " A Loose Saraband" Love (p. 34) runs off with the author's heart

"And though he sees it full of wounds, Cruel—still on he wounds it."

The meaning is—still he continues to wound it, much as we say "on he talks—or goes." Mr. Hazlitt alters the last line to "Cruel one, still he wounds it," which is weak. However, admirers of the poetry of the time of the Revolution can now obtain a complete and accurate copy of Lovelace, well-printed on good paper, at a moderate price—a thing which up to this time was not. Mr. Singer's edition was neither accurate nor complete.