SWORDS AND PLOWSHARES.
Swords and Plowshares. By Ernest Crosby. (Grant Richards. Os. net.)—We are not quite sure that it is necessary to criticise this book. The merits of an earlier volume are asserted with much precision and energy by its author or publisher (not Mr. Richards, we should say). It is, we are informed, "a brilliant satire," and the illustrations are " clever." However, it will not do any harm to say what we think. The satire, to our mind, is not brilliant enough. If " indignation makes verses," it must. make them without a halt. Such a stanza as the following is not good enough :—
"Take up the White Man's burden, And teach the Philippines What interest and taxes are And what a mortgage means. Give them electrocution chairs, And prisons, too, galore,
And if they seem inclined to kick, Then spill their heathen gore."
If Mr. Crosby will lay on the stripes, he must do it a little more
artistically. And let him avoid Walt Whitman. To imitate Walt Whitman is as perilous as to imitate Pindar. The hapless aspirant will fall, not into the sea, but into a quagmire of stupidity and commonplace.
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