Porray.—Lettiore Plectro. (Occasional Verses.) By Alfred Cochrane. (Longmans and Co.)—English
humour has in a great degree changed its favourite mode of expression. There are two or three exceptions, which will probably occur to every one, but for the most part it is comic verse nowadays that is really amusing. Mr. Alfred Cochrane has a ready wit and a facile pen, and is entitled to a good place among the writers of vers de socield. Here are a couple of stanzas from "Le Roi eat Mort," the letter of a brother who has just heard that his tomboy sister is engaged to be married:— " And Miss Mabel Carew, who in Grosvenor Square Is to-day the most classic of queens, With her diamonds and lace and her dignified air And her smiles for the dukes and the dean% Was a wild-haired young lady who shouted with pride Such expressions as 'humbug I ' and 'rot! What an expert she was at a banister slide! What a capital catapult shot !
You remember the great setts of tennis we played On the gravel court under the hill.
And the way we gulped down ginger-beer in the shade Out of bottles with wonderful skill, And the matches at cricket we fought on the lawn, And the ferrets we nurtured and fed, And the fir-tree you climbed for a shilling at dawn, When the powers were all safely in bed."
Nor does a more serious Muse refuse to come at Mr. Cochrane's call. There is an excellent "In Memoriam" on J. A. Froude, and "The Second-hand Furniture Shop" has some real pathos in it. —A Harp from the Willows. By the Rev. W. Moore. (J. Parker and Co.)—Mr. Moore has something to say and knows how to say it, though his force of expression varies. "Modern Oxford," in three cantos, is his chief effort in this volume, and it is a really eloquent utterance of the conflict between doubt and faith. The old walls of Oxford seem vacant of the faith that once dwelt in them. Is there anything to stand in its stead ? A Pagan worship of strength and beauty, as shown in the passion for athletics ? Not so ; the old belief, fruitful still of good works, survives, though in other places and other forms :— "0 seek not then Christ's seminaries where Faith once did plant them in the Western isles, In grey quadrangles and time-beaten walls And leafy lanes of thought, by easy streams.
"""" ' • • • But seek them, where the morning's golden rain Washes the low white walls and level roofs By the broad rush of Himalayan snows.
Retied Hie new home in penitence and tears Late for her long neglect by Oxford reared, The arrow flies by else?, the pestilence walks At night time : anti, than pestilence more dread, The plague that wastes its tens of thousand hearts Walks in the pomp of dark idolatries."
Mr. Moore has caught here something of the true music of blank verse. Nor is he without the art of saying common things in the "grand style,"—witness the following :—
"November's sunlieht pale,
Ghost of the golden blaze on Elia' plain.
iii juts on green fatefill -paces of the sward That streteli betwixt the throng-compelling ropes Like lanes of glory onward to the goal, 'the tape's white glimmer, where the foremost breast Shall rush on hairbreadth victory; and now The tiptoe mnment of expectancy Becomes the thrilling moment of the start. Let who can track the storm-sweet eagle tell,
In that career of giants, who shall win."
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