THE OXFORD BOOK OF VICTORIAN VERSE.
The Oxford Book of Victorian Verse. Chosen by Arthur Quiller- Couch. (Oxford University Press. 7s. 6d. net.)—By Victorian verso is apparently meant everything between Walter Savage Lander and Mr. Rupert Brooke, and we may leave it to others to decide whether the poems in this book have any common quality besides that of being "Victorian." Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch has been very inclusive in his choice, and inclusiveness is the most important quality in an anthology consisting largely of con- temporary verse, as to which absolute judgments can hardly yet be formed. Everyone naturally will find a few of his favourite poems left out, but only a few omissions can be named that will be almost universally noticed. No explanation is offered in the preface for the complete absence of " The Shropshire Lad," though the copyright may perhaps have been withheld. Is the same reason to be given for the lack of any selections from" The City of Dreadful Night"—though several of James Thomson's miscellaneous poems are printed ? Again, the choice from Mr. Kipling seems so uncharac- teristic that one can hardly help believing that it was forced upon the editor. These and countless other questions of taste might be profitably argued. But we must draw attention instead to a much more serious blot upon the collection. One of the most beautiful and best-known lyrics in the language—Beddoes's " Dream- Pedlary "—is grossly mutilated without a word of apology and without even any hint that the mutilation has been performed. The poem as it was written contains only five stanzas ; in Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch's version it contains two. To venture upon such an improvement at all is to offer to the poet an affront which would excite the sharpest censure from most critics ; to print the inept fragment as though it were the whole is in addition to misdirect the public. And an editor who takes such liberties must inevitably impair confidence in his work. Who can now feel absolutely certain, without a reference to an original edition, that Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch's blue pencil has not been through a couple of stanzas of " The Scholar Gypsy," or that he has not pruned a dozen superfluous lines from the " Hymn to Proserpine " We cannot help deploring that the usefulness of the anthology should in this way be so greatly diminished.
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