PORTRV.—Peents. By Frederic W. H. Myers. (Macmillan.)—The principal poem in

this volume "S. Paul" we criticized at length when it appeared : that which ranks next to it in importance "S. John the Bap- tist" we noticed at the time of its publication in Macmillan's Magazine. In the minor poems, hitherto unpublished, with which Mr. Myers com- pletes his volume, we see the same signs of power which make us hope so much from the writer. In one way they are more satisfactory. The vehement rhetoric which issues from the month of S. Paul, the subtle self-questionings to which the Baptist gives utterance, seem somewhat wanting in dramatic propriety. We feel a more perfect enjoyment in the poet's great gift of eloquent expression when he speaks in his own person. We would select for special praise "Ante Diem," with its two exquisite opening stanzas ;—

"0 seek not with untimely art To ope the bud before it blows! Bewitching from the folded heart Reluctant petals of the rose.

" Too quickly cherished, quickly dear, She came, the graceful child and gay, 0 leave her in her early year, Till April crimson into May !"

And this, " On a Grave at Grindelwald :"— " Here let us leave him; for his shroud the snow, For funeral lamps he has the planets seven, For a great sign the icy stair shall go Between the heights to heaven.

" One moment stood he as the angels stand, High in the stainless eminenee of air ; The next, he was not, to his fatherland Translated unaware."

—Madrigals, Songs, and Sonnets. By John Arthur Blaikie and Edmund William Gosse. (Longtnans.)—We can, at least, say of this volume of verse that it has sufficient merit to justify its appearance,—the merit of well-ordered metre, of graceful fancy, and above all, of a genuine love of rural things which not nu frequently finds an adequate expression in words. Only we could wish that the two friends had used with a more unsparing severity the privilege, which this common publication makes us presume, of mutual criticism. There is scarcely a poem, scarcely a stanza, which has not some weakness of expression. The best poems that we have found are "Ianthe," a "Madonna of 1310," which, as our readers will see from the one stanza which we quote, recalls not un- pleasantly the manner of Mr. Robert Browning :—

" Was not this lady, with great gold crown, And drapery heavy with gems, and straight, Whose massive aureole presses down

Her lank hair like a metal plate,—

Some sweet Italian girl, whose eye, While she sang right blithely down the street, Flashed up at Giotto suddenly, As she tripp'd away on her light hinds' feet ?"

And a sonnet, " To Devon":—

" As some proud mistress whose unweeting scorn Disdains the heart that sigheth in her thrall, And thinks of him, if so she think at all, As throned queen might think of beggar born ; Yet he, the while in secrecy and pain, By reason of intensity of love,

Will never from his mind her thought remove, And, past all rescue, holds his soul in chain; So though, dear land, alas! we parted are By many leagues of meadow, vale, and hill, And thou art all regardless of my care, Yet thoughts of thee do my sad bosom fill And in my dreams I tread thy solemn shores, Thy blissful shadowy woods, and purple moors."

Here there is a certain pathos in the thought to which, however, the language scarcely does justice. The three poems of which we have spoken are, we find, the productions of Mr. Gesso. We shall not disturb, we hope, a literary friendship, by saying that we prefer his workman- ship to that of his collabm ateur.—Poems of Home and Nature. By Alfred West. (Longmans.)—The modesty with which Mr. West speaks of his earnest wish "to be recognized and acknowledged as one entitled to a place in the ranks of the admitted poets of the present day," together, we may add, with his courteous mention of the critics, inclines us to speak as well as we can of his volume. We shall best express our opinion of it by noticing one poem which strikes us as being as good as anything in the book, "The Child's Problem." It opens with these lines:—

"All amid the rapid beating of the city's restless heart, Where the human lives grow feverish, in unhealthy action start, And amid the changeless brickwork, and the eternal strife of streets, Where each Esau finds a Jacob in the brother man he meets In a room a boy sat reading."

Where a good beginning is spoilt by the very weak second line. The " problem " is that what the boy is reading, the description in the Apocalypse of the New Jerusalem, does not satisfy him, as being the description of a city. He would rather hear of rivers and fields and woods. The city, each as he knows it, seems altogether unlovely. The idea has a certain force and originality about it, but its treatment is not adequate. Mr. West's very love of the country makes him dilute his language with too much about heather-clad hills, and rooks, and sea- shores; and then after all, the problem is not answered. The fierce declamation, just as it maybe, with which the squalor of our great cities is denounced, does not even suggest an answer. In short, we may say, and the same may be said more or less truly of the whole volume, that Mr. West deals with subjects that are too strong for him.—The Immor- tals, by Nicholas Michell (Tegg), is a poem showing some play of fancy, and power of language, in which the author works out the hypothesis contained in Sir David Brewster's "More Worlds than One."— Mr. R. B. Holt, in The Scald (Longmans), tells in sufficiently fluent and melodious verse, but in language more ornate than becomes his subject, certain Scandinavian tales.—Mr. Alexander Gibbs's transla- tion of George Buchanan's Latin poems about Jtphtha and John the Baptist (Edinburgh : J. M. Miller) will hardly prove attractive to many readers. Buchanan was a great Latinist, but his verse will hardly bear translation, certainly not such translation as this, when the "messenger" describes the death of Jephtha's daughter

When now before the mournful altar stood The virgin, destined victim, maiden shame Suffused her visage pale with crimson blush, Unwont to look on crowds of men ; as one May stain the Indian ivory with purple, Or roses among snowy lilies mix, But with the shame conjoined upon her face Conspicuous shone the power of certain faith. Alone among the weeping crowds she stood Without a tear, firm, and with cheerful looks, Indifferent to her fate, nor struck with fear. The virgin nigh to death her tears restrained, The people them restrain not."

Of Sighs of Hope, by Emily Bayne (Pickering), we shall best give a notion by quoting two stanzas of "The Babylonish Captives": "Babylon, thou conquering city, Strong and cruel. proud and free, Hest thou never heard of pity, That thou bidet us sing to thee?

"See thy weeping willows bending, O'er our harps untuned, unstrung, Till our steps are homeward wending Zion's songs shall be unsung.

And so it goes on for sixty lines, musical verse enough, but yet such as one would think it impossible for a person of taste to publish, or even to write, while we can still read, "By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept."—Poems, Descriptive and Lyrical, by Thomas Cox, appear in a new edition (Longmans) ; so also do Poems, by Matthias Barr, (Cassell and Co.) ; and a volume of verse which bears the title of Kling, Klang, and Kiang, by William Alfred Gibbs (Moron).