Studies in Poetry. By Stopford A. Brooke. (Duckworth and i
Co. 6s. net.)—Three of these six papers are given to Shelley, one to William Blake, another to Walter Scott, and the sixth to Keats. Perhaps the Scott lecture is the best. Better things, indeed, have been written about Scott than poets of higher degree have been able to call forth. Among the good things is the contrast between Scott's sense of the beautiful in Nature and Wordsworth's, and the appreciation of the Celtic element in him. The "William Make" and " Keats " lectures have much that is admirable in them, but it is unprofitable to criticise a critic. The Shelley lectures we like the least of all. It seems impossible for a Shelley worshipper to use language in its ordinary sense. 'Shelley abhorred sensuality " ; but when he ceased to love one woman he *mat away with another woman whom he did love. This Mr. Brooke allows to be contrary to the "code of morals which prevails in society on the question of marriage." "Prevails in society " ! That is a strange way of describing the Seventh Commandment, — a Commandment which every Christian sect, and indeed every religious body, in the land agrees to be a supreme obligation.
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