JOSEPH SKIPSEY.
joseph SUpsey. By the Right Hon. R. Spence Watson. (T. Fisher Unwin. 2s. 6d. net.)—We are glad to have this memoir 'of a remarkable men, and should have been better pleased if Dr. Watson could have contrived to keep all irrelevant matter out of it. How in the world does it concern the development of Skipsey's genius that two Dorsetshire labourers wore transported for combination when he was two years old P Joseph Skipsey 'was a pitman in Northumberland. for the first years of his Working life. He went to London in 1852 to take up work in
• vonnexion with railways, but returned before long to eoal-mining. All this time he was at work educating himself. The story of how he did this is in a sense familiar, but of inexhaustible interest; and it is a groat pleasure to follow Skipsey's life as its surroundings became more and more such as suited his temper and tastes. Ultimately he and his wife became caretakers of the Shakespeare House at Stratford-on-Avon. There was something of ideal fitness in the appointment, because he was a Shakespeare scholar of no mean degree. Dr. Watson's appreciation of his literary achievement seems to us somewhat exaggerated.. It has been coloured, one can see, by his remembrance of the man's personality. His verse, judged by a literary standard, is far from being first-rate. It may be the case that he is the only man who ever sang of the toils and perils of the collier's life, but his song is far from being perfect in quality. The fact is that his sprightly verse is much superior in form to the serious. There is doubtless something in what Dante Rossetti suggested, that the Hartley ballad (relating the terrible disaster at the Hartley Colliery in 1862) was meant to be sung, not said. As we read it, it is impossible not to feel its imperfections of form.
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