CURRENT LITERAT URE.
SOME BOOKS OF THE WEEK.
,Under this heading we notice such Books of the week as have not been yeserval for review in other forms.]
Realms of Gold. By John Dennis. (Grant Richards. 3s. 6d.) —Mr. Dennis gives this title to "a book for youthful students of English literature" as one who would guide those who might be embarrassed by the choice, where the wealth is so abundant. The volume contains six " Talks," in which the author discusses, in epochs, the great writers of this nation. The First Talk is intro- ductory, giving a survey of the subject, and treating of the temper in which it is to be studied; the Second takes us from Chaucer to Dryden ; the Third from Dryden to Cowper. It is poetry that is the main subject of these discourses, but we have occasional digressions into prose, as when " Boswell's Johnson " or the " Waverley Novels" are spoken off. The Sixth Talk is devoted to the poets of the latter portion of this century, begin- ning with Tennyson and his brothers. Mr. Dennis is always a sane and kindly critic, and his volume should serve its purpose admirably well. Surely in the quotation from " Rejected Addresses " (Crabbe) "enlisted" ought to be " English Satires. With an Introduction by Oliphant Smeaton. (Blackie and Son. 3a. 6d.)—This is a selection, on the whole well made, from satirists, ranging from William Langland in the latter half of the fourteenth century down to Thackeray, A. H. Clough, and C. S. Calverley. We fear that the early satires will not find much favour. They seem to want point and vigour. When we get to the second half of the seventeenth century, the case is changed. Samuel Butler, Andrew Marvell, and Dryden are masters of the art. The most humorous piece of Marvell's might have been given, his verses about Holland :— “ The fish full oft the burgher dispossesst And sat, not as a meat but as a guest."
The satirists of the next century, again, were giants. Pope con- tends with Dryden for the first place. The task of selection ;has, on the whole, been well performed. In the case of Byron, we think, there has been an error. The " Waltz " is certainly 'objectionable. Byron preaching against immodesty is too monstrous an example of Ciotti= aceusat moechos. "The
Vision of Judgment" is profane, and if Mr. Smeaton thinks that "personal scurrility is foreign to the nature of true satire," why the gross abuse of the Dedication to " Don Juan" ? Retried, we may remark, is the correct spelling, not Basviad, as we find it written thrice on one page. " Qui Bavium non edit amet tua carminar Maevi" (Virg. Eclg. iii. 90).
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