CURRENT LITERATURE.
The Death. of Alexander the Great. By Cecil Henry Boatilower. (Shrimpton, Oxford.)—This, the " Newdigato Prize Poem" for the year, is a creditable exercise, though scarcely rising above the average. Prize-poems now-a-days are formed after the model of Mr. Morris, rather than of Pope, and we are not sure that we approve entirely of the change. It seems to excuse an occasional slovenli- ness of execution, and to impair the form without greatly improving the thought. The best passage, in our judgment, of Mr. Bartfiower's pOem, has to do, curiously enough, not with Alexander, but with Daniel. The king dies, but :— " There was no finger-writing on the wall,
No prophet-form.stood forth before them an, As in these self-same walls, not long ago."
And then we have the story of Daniel and Belshazzar :— "Then there was only one that bad not sold The keys of wisdom for the greed of gold, One whose strong spirit no voluptuous mirth Had dragged from high communion to the earth. He stood a king, 'mid all that band of slaves, . Like heavenward rock, about-whose feet the Mayes Run wildly to and fro, distraught and pale, Leaping and tumbling from the crags they scale."
Surely "distraught and pale" are very carious epithets for waves.
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