The Poetical Works of Jean Ingelow. With a Portrait. (Long-
mans and Co. 7s. 6d.)—" What think you of Jean Ingelow, the wonderful poet ?" Christina Rossetti wrote in 1863, and it was with something like wonder that her earliest "Poems," pub- lished in that year, were greeted. An idyllic charm, a grace of expression, and a lyrical gift due to no earlier singer won the ear and heart of the public, and within eight years the book attained its sixteenth edition. With a few striking exceptions,. Miss Ingelow's later poems lack the spontaneity and joyous fresh- ness of her more youthful work. She wrote with too much ease, but her knowledge of Nature was great, her sense of beauty strong, and there are not many poems in this handsome volume which her admirers would care to part with. If Jean Ingelow owes her place among the poets to five or six comparatively short pieces, there is little, if anything, in this complete collection of her poetry that is unworthy of her reputation and nothing that is not "pure womanly."
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