Sketches in Prose and Verse. By F. B. Doveton. (Sampson
Low and Co.)—We do not expect that we shall please Mr. Doveton when we say that his prose is better than his verse. Yet it can scarcely be doubted that his sketches of Nature and angling reminiscences will please many readers who will not care for the poems, sentimental or humorous. These talks about Devonshire moors and streams are written with a freshness and force, and have about them a reality, which we mien elsewhere. The story in Edgar Poe's manner is any- thing bat a success. Very few hands can wield that pen. The social sketches are but of moderate merit. What is said about the mission of women at the end of No. 4 is really too silly. Mr. Doveton has much to learn about metre. Let him study Lord Tennyson's blank verse carefully, and he will be a little leas rash. We are not concerned to defend the poem which he criticises—indeed, it seems stilted and false—bat the writer is evidently a much better master of rhythm than his critic. "Through gorgeous glimmers of voluptuous gloom" is metrically correct, though the critic complains that "voluptuous " is compressed into three syllables. Why not ? In two oases out of three the word will be better so need. In the verse, the humorous i8 better than the sentimental. But with Praed, and Calverley, and Mr. Looker, not to speak of Messrs. Austin Dobson and Andrew Lang, to judge by, one is apt to want something more than Mr. Doveton can give us, even when he is at hie beet. We would ask our anther whether he thinks that a lady is absolved from her marriage-vow by being buried alive.
Previous page
