Lyrical Verse from Elisabeth to Victoria. Selected by Oswald Crawfurd.
(Chapman and Hall.)—" Nothing too old and nothing too new " has been the editor's maxim in choosing. He does not go back beyond Elizabeth. The pre-Elizabethans are too archaic for modern taste. As to the Victorians we cannot yet have made up our minds. " Father Front" is the latest singer included. This seems reasonable enough ; and then, as to the later limit, it is quite impossible to exercise a proper choice when the selector is stopped in this or that direction by the law of copyright. We are inclined to blame him for omissions which are involuntary. This is a very desirable volume.—Another volume of selections, with title which sufficiently indicates its character, is Nature Poems by Longfellow, illustrated by Paul de Longme (Ward, Lock, and Bowden).—Yet a third, also described by its title-page, is Songs and Ballads of Short, edited by William WeaVer Tom- linson (Walter Scott).—In "Allen's Naturalists' Library" (W. H. Allen and Co.), British Birds, Vol. II., by R. Bowden Sharpe.
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