The Voyage of Ithaca. By Sir Edwin Arnold. (John Murray,
5s.)—Sir Edwin Arnold has certainly full possession of a secret which most of his younger contemporaries have failed to acquire. He is interesting ; we can read him, not constrained by a sense of duty, but because we like it. He has faults in plenty; but this one quality may fairly outweigh them all. After all, what is the good of being imaginative and eloquent and thoughtful, and all the rest of the fine things which it is often possible to discern in modern verse, if one cannot be read ? The Voyage of Ithobal is founded on the story in Herodotus of the navigators who at Pharaoh's command sailed round Africa till they saw the sun on their right hand. It is a very ornate piece of work; the poet. delights in word-painting and revels in prodigalities of colour. Still, he can be read. He avoids the subjective, and gives himself up to the description of his tropical observations. Here is a specimen of tropical landscape, with its gorgeous foreground!, of life, vegetable and animal :— e We saw the butterflies :—by 1.6111! lord !
Thou had'st not missed the flag-flower, or the loW,.
The blood-red granate-bnd or palm blossom Nor all thine Egypt's gardens, viewing there What burning brilliance danced on double wings From stem to stem, or lighted on the leaves Blotting the grey and brown with lovely blaze Of crimsons, silver-spotted, summer blues By gold fringe bordered, and gemmed ornament, Alight with living lustre. One, all pale, The colour of the sunrise when pearl clouds Take their first flush ; one, as if lazulite Were cut to filmy blue and gold ; and one, Black with gold bosses ; and a purple one, Wings broad as is my palm with silvery moons
And script of what the Gods meant when they made-
This delicate work, flitting across the shade, This breath a burning jewel, at the next With closed vans seeming like the faded twig It perched on, or the dry brown mossy bark."
And these purpurei panni recur again and again in Sir Edwin; Arnold's decorative narrative.
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