BROWNING TO RUPERT BROOKE.* TUE time has long since gone

by in which it was necessary to say anything in rraise of the plan and execution of Irard'a English Poets. Like The Golden Treasury, it has passed out of the competition of anthologies and become a national institution. In the thirty-eight years that have elapsed since the first volume w•as published, death has knocked at the doors of many of the original contributors ; some, like Swinburne, Myers, Lang, and the most distinguished of English critics who wrote the General Preface, have their own poems now levied upon for judgment by a new generation of readers ; three alone—the editor, and his brilliant wife, and Mr. Edmund Gosse—remain to carry on the tradition, and yet the present volume worthily maintains the standard set by Matthew Arnold in 1880.

Of the selections from the three great Victorians with which Vol. V. opens we need say little here. This section has been published already, incorporated in Vol. IV.; end indeed we see no particular reason why it should not have been allowed to stay there. " Wordsworth to Tennyson" represented a definite period in English poetry of which the rising and setting stars had rays in common =shared by their immediate predecessors or successors. Aud yet how can we find fault with an editor who gives us the pleasure of reading again " The Bishop Orders his Tomb," " Homo Thoughts, from Abroad," end the " Epi- logue to Asolando " ; "Shakespeare," "Rugby Chapel," and " Dover Beach " ; " Team, idle Tears," " The Splendour falls on Castle Walls," "Ulysses," and the "Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington " ? He reminds us of noble friends, laid aside perhaps in the importunate press of life, and seen again hero, it may be, with different eyes from those that beheld them when we whispered over their poignant words and rejoiced in the " high seriousness " of a classic who was also a contemporary. Other luminaries have arisen and we have grown older ; we criticize where we need to worahip ; but Browning, Arnold, and Tennyson are too firmly embedded in the memory of affection ever to subside for us into the place of mere books. " Let not their frailties be remembered; they were very great men."

Nevertheless, amongst those who have gone to join

" the choir invisible

Of those immortal dead who live again In minds made bettor by their presenca,"

there are poets represented in the volume before us who are fully worthy of a place with their high forerunners. The Valhalla of poetry would have to be thronged indeed if room could not be found for Swinburne and George Meredith, or, on a slightly lower plane, for Edward FitzGerald, William Morris, and Rupert Brooke ; and if we do not include in the same category George Eliot, Cardinal Newman, and Robert Louis Stevenson, it is because we regard them less as poets than es great authors who, on occasion, have written poetry. But on these also it is un- necessary for us to dwell ; their work is too familiar for quota- tion. We turn in preference to one of Rupert Brooke's less well- known sonnets to illustrate how certain themes intrinsically as old as Plato—older perhaps than recorded human thought—. have been harmonized by the youngest of our dead musicians;— "Not with vain tears, when we're beyond the sun, We'll beat on the substantial doors, nor tread

Those dusty hies-roads of the aimless dead Plaintive for Earth ; but rather turn and run Down some close-covered by-way of the air, Some low sweet alley between wind and wind, Stoop under faint gleams, thread the shadows, find Some whispering ghost-forgotten nook, and there Spend in pure converse our eternal day ; Think each in cools immediately wise ;

Learn all we lacked before ; hear, know, and say What this tumultuous body now denies ; And feel, who have laid our groping hands away ; And see, no longer blinded by our eyes."

Sometimes, as we turn the pages, a stanza from a singer such

• The town's?, Torts : Srketiooe. ra. Browsing to Rupert Brook, EdUrd Et limns, thimobry Word, London Macmillan and Co. Mx. set-t

as Lord do Tabley, whose verse is generally made rather than inspired, leaps forth to charm us, as in "A Leave-taking (Love dead)" :—

" Forbear to move him. Penne, why should we stay !

Go back no snore to listen for his treat.

Resume our old calm face of every day :

Not all our kneeling turns that sacred head

Long dear, long dead "

Or in the opposite extreme, the quick recoil of the lines and the tight fitting of language to thought in ono who almost studiously

avoided lucidity delay us wondering over Francis Thompson's "The End of It " :—

" She did not live to love ; but hated him

For making her to love, and so her whim From passion taught misprision to begin ; And all this sin Was because love to cast out had no skill

Self, which was regent still. Her own self-will made void her own selra

No anthology ever yet included all that its strongest admirers would wish to find in it, and we cannot grumble at the omission of favourite passages of our awn, simply because they are

favourite ; but where some obvious readjustments of space- limits to merit would have secured a place for a work of genius at the expense of leaving out what no ono would regret, we

cannot but wish that the editor had exercised his powers more drastically. It is impossible to defend the allocation of six pages to the spasmodic Alexander Smith when Edward Fits- Gerald has to be content with the same number, and Thackeray with three less ; a little judicious pruning would surely have been worth while if only for the sake of adding William Johnson

Cory's " Horaclitus," and the exquisite lyric that Charles Lamb himself admired to the point of envy —FitzGerald's "The

Meadows in Spring." But within the assigned limits, the task of selecting representative selections has been done with the greatest discrimination. So much pains indeed have been

taken to exhibit the authors at their best, that we aro afrai 1 those who judge the bulk from the sample hero presented may sometimes lay up disappointment for themselvas when they seek the source of the quotations in search of further delights.

The prefatory criticisms are nearly all models of what such work should be. It was inevitable that Sir Sidney Colvin should write on Stevenson and Mr. Gesso on Swinburne, and

they have performed their task in the way the world expected of them; 3Ir. Graves, too, in his dual capacity as least pedantic

of our literary critics and mast scholarly of our light poets.

appropriately and adequately takes charge of the section oat " Humorous Verse " ; but their colleagues keep up, almost uniformly, to the same high level Mr. Drinkwater's Prefaces, in particular, are always illuminating, not only on the immediate author under discussion, but on the type to which he belongs ; and equal praise must be given to Mr. Aldoua Huxley for his reviews of Davidson, Dowson, and Middleton. The editor himself bears a somewhat larger proportion of the burden on his capable shoulders than in some of the earlier volumes, and we have learned by experience that when we are moved on a

first reading to dissent front any of his judgments, reconsidera- tion will generally convince us of our error. At the sane, time, we must admit we are surprised to lied him deseribin; FitzGerald's admiration for Crabbe as paradoxical. Why should we be astonished at FitzGerald for assigning a high ran' to a poet who was the faVourite of ' Is so diverse as Ednum I Burke's, Lord Byron's, Sir Walter Scott's, and Cardinal New- man's ? Lastly, we must mention the appreciation of Repert Brooke for which Sir Henry .Newbolt is responsible : it is a noble tribute, not unworthy of the follow-singer of that love of England for which, on three continents awl seven seas, her children have fought and died.