FOUR VOLUMES OF VERSE.* Ma. DOBSON supplies in the "

Notes " to this volume a brief bibliography of his verse publications. His first ventures were made in the "Poets' Corner" of various magazines. The first collection appeared not quite a quarter of a century ago. Various volumes, containing things new and old, have appeared from time to time. And now we have the latest, not, we sincerely hope, the last, in-gathering, including, we suppose, all that the poet thinks most worthy of preservation. It is no inconsiderable outcome for one who has held, and still holds, an important official position, and has also made successful experiments in other provinces of literature.

There must be, we reckon, some twelve thousand verses in the volume. That is nothing in itself. The Horatian bard who could reel over a hundred verses standing on one foot has many modern inheritors of his gift. What is really sur- prising is the very fine finish of the work. From beginning to end there is scarcely a flaw, a halt in the metre, a break in the rhythm, or a discord in the rhyme. Unless Mr. Dobson has a quite wonderful gift for writing "fair copies " offhand he must have grudged neither time nor pains to the linix labor. Perhaps one secret of his success is to be found in the masculine character of his literary tastes. Alexander Pope is one of his favourites, and Samuel Johnson is another.

The first of the "Memorial Verses," the fifth of the twelve parts into which Mr. Dobson has divided his collection, is "A Dialogue to the Memory of Mr. Alexander Pope." We could not find a better example both of what our poet admires, and of his own aptness as a disciple of the school. First, we have a fine apology for the man,—

" Whose whole Career, romance it as you please,

Was (what be call'd it) but a long Disease ' : Think of his Lot,—his Pilgrimage of Pain, His 'crazy Carcass' and his restless Brain ; Think of his Night-Hours with their Feet of Lead, His dreary Vigil and his aching Head; Think of all this, and marvel then to find The crooked Body with a crooked Mind !'

Nay rather, marvel that, in Fate's Despite,

You find so much to solace and delight,—

So much of Courage, and of Purpose high In that unequal Struggle not to die."

But as he goes on to say, :— " To-day, methinks, we touch The Work too little and the Man too much. Take up the Lock, the Satires, Eloise—

What Art supreme, what Elegance, what Ease ! How keen the Irony, the Wit how bright, The Style how rapid, and the Verse how light ! Then read once more, and you shall wonder yet At Skill, at Turn, at Point, at Epithet."

And here is the final profession of faith :—

"So I, that love the old Augustan Days Of formal Courtesies and formal Phrase; That like along the finished Line to feel The Ruffle's Flutter and the Flash of Steel ; • (1.) Collected Poems. By Austin Dobson. London : Kagan Paul, Trench, and Co.—(2 ) Poems Now Rrot Collected. By Edmund Clarence ascii:sin. L.-mann : Gay and Bird.--(3.) Balada of the Fleet, and other Poems. BY Ben,elt Rodd. London Edward Arnold.—(4.1 Lyrics of Leidy Life. By

LaureLce Dunbar. Loudon Chapm tn and Hall.

That like my Couplet as compact as clesr ; That like my Satire sparkling tho severe, Unmix'd with Bathos and unmarr'd by Trope, I fling my Cap for Polish—and for POPE!"

Mr. Dobson's other admiration is to be found under the title of "A Postscript to Retaliation "

"But read him for Style,—and dismiss from your thoughts, The crowd of compilers who copied his faults,—

Say, where is there English so full and so clear, So weighty, so dignified, manly, sincere ? So strong in expression, conviction, persuasion ?

So prompt to take colour from place and occasion ?

So widely remov'd from the doubtful, the tentative; So truly—and in the best sense—argumentative ? You may talk of your BURKES and your GIBBONS so clover, But I hark back to him with a JoHrrsorr for ever !

We may give a specimen of Mr. Dobson's Muse when he is in another mood :—

"Not as ours the books of old—

Things that steam can stamp and fold; Not as ours the books of yore— Rows of type, and nothing more.

Then a book was still a Book, Where a wistful man might look, Finding something through the whole, Beating,—like a human soul.

In that growth of day by day, When to labour was to pray, Surely something vital passed To the patient page at last ; Something that one still perceivea Vaguely present in the leaves ; Something from the worker lent ; Something mute—but eloquent !"

But we must pass on. Mr. Dobson is too well known to our readers to need any further commendation.

Mr. E. C. Stedman's volume is also a collection of poems which, for the most part, have been already given to the world. He occupies something of the same position as Mr.

Dobson's, and appeals to the same class of readers. He is, indeed, less conspicuously master of the instrument which he wields. Now and again his phrases, turns of speech, and rhymes have the look of having been searched for rather than of being the natural expression which the writer could not help giving to his thought. Take, for instance, those lines from the "Old Picture Dealer," which describe the old man's devo- tion to a masterpiece in which the rest of the world does not feel an equally unquestioning faith :—

" Warm grows the radiant masterpiece,

The sweetness of Correggio !

The visionary hues increase, Angelic lustres come and go ;

And still, as still in Parma too,— In Rome, Bologna, Florence, all,—

Goes on the outer world's ado, Life's transitory, harsh recall."

' Too" in the fifth line would hardly have been there but for the rhyme, and "ado" is scarcely the best word for the con- text. The best poems in the volume are, we think, some of the "Commemorations," and of those that bear the title of "The Carib Sea," and are full of the delight which these isles of perpetual summer must inspire in the children of a more rigorous clime. The latter, to be fairly judged, must be taken as a whole. The former naturally lend themselves more easily to extract. Here is one dedicated to Whittier, a man whose remarkable personality seems to have made an impres- sion greater than can be accounted for by even the highest estimate of his literary achievements :—

"An VIGILEN.

What seest thou, where the peaks about thee stand, Far up the ridge that severs from our view That realm unvisited? What prospect new Holds thy rapt eye ? What glories of the land, Which from yon loftier cliff thou now hast scanned, Upon thy visage set their lustrous hue ?

Speak, and interpret still, 0 Watchman true, The signals answering thy lifted hand !

And bide thee yet ! still linger, ere thy feet To sainted bards that beckon bear thee down— Though lilies, asphodel and spikenard sweet Await thy tread to blossom ; and the crown Long since is woven of Heaven's palm-leaves, meet For him whom Earth can lend no more renown."

It is difficult to judge of a ballad except we can see it whole,

and Mr. Rennell Rodd's ballads are of the longest, the five whieh tell the story of Drake occupying more than one hundred and fifty pages. Perhaps as good a specimen as we can detach from its context without serious lose to his force and meaning is the following. After a picture of the fever working havoc in the camp which Drake had pitched "in a deep reef-sheltered blue elbow at Darien," we have the follow- ing pathetic contrast of death in the wilderness and death at home :—

" For look you it is sweet and well in the day we come to die, To know familiar presences and kindred faces by ;

To watch from sheltering windows wide the happy light that plays

On pleasant scenes that seem to soothe the ebbing of our days ;

To see the shadows lengthening down the quiet fields we knew, And the farewell sunset purpling the distant hills of blue ; While tender voices whisper near with gently bated breath, So softly in its season falls the kindly kiss of death.

But it's ill to pass in the wilderness on the bed of wattled reeds, With only the swamp to cool the fire of the fever that it breeds.

Yet they that march in England's van have such grim death to face, And alien suns shall bleach the skulls of our unquiet race.

The desert wastes shall gather them, the red sand choke their groans, And every tide of all the seas roll up their restless bones."

Here, again, is a little vignette from the tropics :—

"Here all was a land of marvel, the fireflies' glimmer at night, The shore where the sea- weed gardens rock under the phosphor light ; The great tree-ferns and the coco palms, and the wild lime's sweet perfume,

The edge of the forest crimsoned with the great hibiscus bloom,

Where clinging from each green tangle hang down like a cluster of bells

Purple and pink and scarlet the frail convolvulus cells;

Where the moth-birds pause and flutter a shower of gems in the air,

Dip slender bills in the waxen cups and drink of the nectar there."

The ballad of Lord Howe's victory off Ushant, the "Glorious First of June," as it used to be called till Nelson's greater achievements somewhat dimmed its glories, is very fine. So, in a different strain, are " Pumwani " and "To Gerald Portal," memorials of comrades with whom the poet has served in the land of the" white man's grave."

Mr. Dunbar would, we are inclined to think, have in any ease a good chance of surviving among the fittest in the minor poets' struggle for existence. In view of the actual facts of his personality, he becomes an interesting phenomenon. He is a pure-blood negro, the son of parents who were slaves ; and Mr. W. D. Howells, who furnishes the volume with an intro- duction, claims for him the distinction of being the first of his race to show real literary power. Some of his poems are in dialect, some in literary English. The dialect is spirited and racy, with a remarkably easy flow of expression. It is not easy to give a specimen, for a few isolated lines do not show to advantage. But we will risk the experiment of a negro dance :—

"Jigs, cotillions, reels an' break-downs, cordrills an' a waltz er two ; Bless yo' soul, dat music winged 'em an' dem people lak to flew.

Cripple Joe, de ole rheumatic, danced dat fib' rum side to middle, Th'owed away his crutch an' hopped it, what's rheumatics 'gist a fiddle ? Eldah Thompson got so tickled dat he lak to los' his grace, Had to tek bofe feet an' hol' dem so's to keep 'em in deir place, An' de Christuns an' de sinnahs got so mixed up on dat fib', Dat I don't see how dey'd pahted ef do trump had chanced ts blow."

Of the literary poems, " Ione " is distinctly the finest. One stanza is all that we have room for :— "Love is no random road wayfarer

Who where he may must sip his glass.

Love is the King, the Purple-Wearer, Whose guard reeks not of tree or grass To blaze the way that he may pass.

What if my heart be in the blast That heralds his triumphant way; Shall I repine, shall I not say : Rejoice, my heart, the Bing has passed !

Mr. Dunbar, whose parents were married after the Civil War, is a yoting man, and has, we feel sure, a future before him.