Thirty Years, being poems, new and old, by the Author
of "John Halifax, Gentleman." (Macmillan.)—These poems have all, we suppose, appeared before in magazines, or in some other fugitive fashion. A few of the earlier ones we well remember, with the appended signature, "D. M. M.," and—it may be a partiality for the friends of our youth—these seem still the best in the book. We need hardly say that true womanly sentiment runs through them all ; but it is rather trying to poems of this order to be collected in one volume. Verses which please and instruct—and many of these are of the didactic order—when read singly or in their setting of prose nar- rative, are apt to ' be viewed more critically when thus, as a whole, claiming our attention.---We have the same feeling with regard to another collection of poems, by a lady of some literary celebrity, Honey from the Weed, by Mary Cowden Clarke (Kogan Paul and Co.), though in this volume the interest is excited principally by the nar- rative poems, of which " The Remittance" has pleased us most. " Minnie's Musings" on "Hateful Harry" are very amusing, and "The Yule Log" is another pretty story, with its weird sights and sounds; but we are not quite sure whether the stories gaiu by versi- fication. The novelettes come first in the book, and the remainder of the rather large volume is made up of what one may call personal poems ; sonnets and rhymes, on occasions interesting to the writer and her friends. These have their own interest always, but unless of transcendent merit, scarcely appeal to the general reader.
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