30 JANUARY 1864, Page 21

Poems. By Elinor J. S. Maitland. (Macmillan and Co.)—These verses

would be better if there was a little less classical enthusiasm about them. When we are told of the Lake of Como that

"Pliny called thee his delight In those accents whose sweet might Still enchants, through years of night," we are disposed to smile. Pliny was a very clever man, but what human being ever was, or is, "enchanted by the sweet might of his accents ?" Generally the poems are pretty, but the writer's powers of expression are hardly equal to her power of conception, and she should cease to imitate Mr. Longfellow by putting a Latin or Greek tag at the end of her stanzas.