The Doom of the Gods of Hellas, by Arthur H.
W. Ingram (A. W. Bennett); Me/usine and other Poems, by Edward Yardley (Longmans); The Light House, by Thomas Bradfield (Elliot Stock); Erdline the Arctic Explorer (W. Kent and Co.).—Books of verse accumulate on our table, and every now and then in despair we take up a batch of them. So many of them seem to be produced by machinery, that there ought to be a machine for noticing them without cutting the leaves or spoilitz, the virgin beauty of the binding. Such a machine would not have a conscience, and might safely proceed on Sidney Smith's principle of never reading a book before reviewing it, for fear of being prejudiced. We might fairly leave the four books before us to the mercy of such a machine. The first of them has some good lines, especially at the end of "The Sonnet on Solferino "and in "The German Emigrant's Farewell Song." But the chief poem in the book is wanting in original thought, and a roughness or carelessness pervades the metre. The second volume contains smooth and polished verses, but nothing more. The third is well-meaning, but, on the whole, rather limp and flabby. The fourth is almost refreshing in its utter rubbish, and will give rise to paroxysms of laughter if it escapes an early grave in the fire or the waste-paper basket.
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