BOOKS.

" R. L. S." : NEW POEMS.*

CHARLES DICICE.NS once seriously meditated calling his magazine Charles Dickens : Conducted by Himself—a much more revolu- tionary proposition in the mid-nineteenth century than it would be in the twentieth, when journalists trade as unhesitatingly on their personal popularity as a manufacturer would on his firm's goodwill. For the sake of the credit of a great artist, we are glad that Dickens abandoned the idea ; but it is not surprising that the particular relation which subsisted between himself and the public (" per- sonally affectionate and like no other man's," as he described it later) should have suggested it to him. To no one writer since 1870 have all classes of the English-speaking race given their hearts as they did to the author of David Copperfield ; but the man who came nearest to taking the place that Dickens occupied was un- doubtedly Robert Louis Stevenson. An appreciably large number of his contemporaries felt towards him as towards an intimate personal friend ; they were prepared to like anything that carne from his pen, whatever its literary quality might be, so long as it savoured of his idiom. To that class, which is still large, the present collection of poems will appeal ; to any one who does not come to their perusal in a spirit of unconditional thankfulness they will prove a disappointment.

In the brief and tantalizing Preface which Mr. Lloyd Osbourne lies contributed to the volume he states " That Stevenson should have preserved these poems through all the vicissitudes of his wander- ing life shows how dearly he must have valued them ; and shows, too, I think beyond any contradiction, that he meant they should be ultimately published." The particular poems referred to are the love-poems; and while we admit that the fact of preservation showed that he valued them, we do not believe that it shows he valued them for their literary merit : there are quite other reasons for keeping love-poems than their felicity of phrase or cadence, and if, as we suspect, those other reasons were paramount in this case, we think that the intention of publication is anything but evident. If, however, these poems were to be published, they certainly ought to

• New Poems and I' ariant Readings. By Robert' Louis Stevenson. London : Matto and Windus. les. net.) have been edited, and they have not been edited. They have simply been collected and printed. There is nothing beyond in- ternal evidence to distinguish early work from late ; there is no attempt to elucidate obscurities, and the text in several instances is left hopelessly corrupt. The titles of the poems we presume via owe in large measure to the unknown collector (because we cannot believe Stevenson would have baptized so many of them so artlessly as by taking their first lines bleeding and meaningless from their context) ; but if so, we -could willingly have spared his labours. Better no caption at all than such jejune headings as : " On now, although the year be done," " I know not how but as I count," and their like.

Although, as we have hinted, there is much in the volume which in our opinion might better have been left in obscurity, and there is nothing which will add to Stevenson's reputation, there is a good deal which those who love(' him will recognize as sounding the true tone of his kind and courageous voice.

" Come—where the great have trod, The great shall lead—

Come, elbow through the press, Pluck Fortune by the dress— By Cod, we must—by God, We shall succeed "— has the manly optimism of " Ordered South " or " Pulvis et Umbra," and the same cheerful lesson is repeated in " Man sails the deep awhile " :- " Hope bears the sole command ; Hope, with unshaken eyes, Sees flaw and storm arise ; Hope, the good steersman, with unwearying hand, Steers, under changing ;ides, Unchanged toward the land.

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'What though the seas and wind Far on the deep should whelm Colours and sails and helm ?

There, too, you touch that port that you designed — There, in the mid-seas realm, Shall you that haven find."

It was not always given to Stevenson to attain " the concise dignity of the tranquil sonnet," but the lines on " Music at the Villa

Marina " appear to us as fine as anything he ever did in that particu- lar form, and we give ourselves the pleasure of quoting them—

first taking the liberty of altering the opening " For " of the text to the " From " which the sense demands :— " From some abiding central source of power, Strong-smitten steady chords, ye seem to flow And, flowing, carry virtue. Far be:ow, The vain tumultuous passions of the hour Fleet fast and disappear ; and as the sun Shines on the wake of tempests, there is oast O'er all the shattered ruins of my past A strong contentment as of battles won.

And yet I cry in anguish, as I hear The long drawn pageant of your passage roll Magnificently forth into the night. To yon fair land ye come from, to yon sphere Of strength and love where now ye shape your flight, O even wings of music, bear my soul !

Ye have the power, if but ye had the will, Strong-smitten steady chords in sequence grand, To bear me forth into that tranquil land Where good is no more ravelled up with ill ; Where she and I, remote upon some hill Or by some quiet river's windless strand May, live and love and wander hand in hand, And follow nature simply, and be still.

From this grim world, where, sadly prisoned, we Sit bound with others' heart-strings as with chains, And, if one moves, all suffer—to that Goal, If such a land, if such a sphere, there be, Thither, from life and all life's joys and pains, O even wings of music, bear my soul ! "

There are other poems in the volume not unworthy of " R. L. S."

which we should be glad to transcribe had we not reached the limits of justifiable quotation : there are pages which might well have appeared in A Child's Garden of Verses—pages in which his special sympathy with the child-mind enables him to reawaken in the adult some understanding of that psychology which the shadows of the prison house have obscured from the ordinary duller vision ; there are some poems intensely personal, beautiful in their affection, but

hardly suitable for the eyes of the public at large ; and there is, we are sorry to say, a residue which has no other claim to notion than that it was written by Stevenson and shows the work of the craftsman before he had learned his traria. In any event, his fame rests upon other foundations than his poetry, which is but a graceful ornament to a building that could stand as enduringly without it ;

and the volume before us displays no powers of his whicli have not been amply illustrated already. It shows more promise than per- formance—had it been written by some new and living recruit to the world of letters, it would have left us eagerly expectant of riper things yet to cone.