MR. SWINBURNE AND OTHERS.* THE greatest of living poets gives

us so little from his store nowadays that we are thankful for small mercies. The dramatic poem of four scenes which is his latest gift is only a small mercy, but it is stamped with all his old mastery of craft. It tells of one episode in the life of Caesar Borgia,-the murder by him of his eldest brother, the Duke of Gandia, an ineffective, pleasure-loving soul, who by the irony of destiny had been given the temporal rank, while Caesar had to content himself with the spiritual. The first scene shows us the extraordinary family together,-the Duke, Caesar, Vannozza, Lucrezia, and Pope Alexander. The brothers bicker, and the Pope in vain strives to preach patience to one who is the counterpart of his own soul. Then we have the murder ; the frantic grief of the Pope ; and lastly, a great scene between Caesar and his father, where the assassin preaches that sublime paganism which the Vicar of Christ had practised. No poet is more competent than Mr. Swinburne to portray such a welter of elemental passions. The final scene contains the dramatic climax of the poem, and it is a drama so bold and intense that the imagination is scarcely satisfied. It demands a continuation of what has been so terribly begun, for it feels that this, after all, is only an episode in Caesar's career, and that the true climax is in the future. We hope that Mr. Swinburne may yet give us that climax. Meantime here is a specimen of his blank verse, at once rapid and stately. Caesar is addressing the Pope :- "1 and thou, •

One, will set hand as never God bath set To the Empire and this steerage of the world. Do thou forget but him who is dead, and was Naught, and bethink thee what a world to wield The Eternal God bath given into thine hands Which daily mould him out of bread, and give His kneaded flesh to feed on. Thou and I Will make this rent and ruinous Italy One. Ours it shall be, body and soul, and great Above all power and glory given of God To them that died to set thee where thou art- Throned on the dust of Caesar and of Christ, Imperial. Earth shall quail again, and rise Again the higher because she trembled. Home So bade it be ; it was, and shall be."

It is difficult to know what to make of the Poet Laureate's Sacred and Profane Love. His sentiments are irreproachable ;

his verse is fairly tuneful, and flows as easily as a brook ; and he is honestly appreciative of honest things. But there is no hint anywhere of the mildest inspiration. The only touch of originality is that he inclines to use the ugly word " male" for

• (1) The Duke of Gandia. By Algernon Charles Swinburne. London: Chatto and Windus. (50.)- (2) Sacred and Profane Lore, and other Poems. By Alfred Austin. Loudon: Macmillan and Co. [4s. 6d. net.]-(3) Mammon and his Message. By John Davidson. London: Grant Richards. rss. net.] -(4) Preludes and R0171117108. By Francis William Bourdillen. London : George Allen and Sons. 13s. 64. net.]-(5) The Earth Passion. By Arthur Davison Ficke. Cranleigh : Samurai Press. 14s. net.) -(6) Songs from the Downs and Danes. By Barberton Lulliam. Loudon: Hogan Paul, Trench, and Co. (3s. 64. net.1-(7) Songs of the Uplands. 7 Alice Law. London : T. Fisher Unwin. (3s. net.1-(8) The Web co Life. By W. W. Gibson. Cranleigh : Samurai Press. [102. 6d. net.]-( ) Songs of Joy. By A. X. Buck-ton. London Methuen and Co. (Iii.]--(10) Enamels. By Arthur Lewis. London Elkin Mathews. Pa. 64. net.]-(11) West-Country Verses. By Arthur L. Salmon. London : W. Blackwood and Sons. f 3s. 'nal- (12) Ballads and Poems. By Members of the Glasgow Ballad Club. Same publishers. [7s. 6d.]-(13) Ballad of a Great City, and other Poems. By David Lowe. London : Nese Age Press. 12s. 6d. net.]-(14) The Ringes Quair. Modernised by W. Mackean. Paisley : A. Gardner. [2s. 64. net]- (13) The Rose and the Fire. • By A. V. Montgomery. Cranleigh: Samurai Press. rm. 64. net..1-(16) Wild Earth. By Padraic Colum. Dublin Maunsel and Co. [1a]-(17) Songs of a Sourdough. By Robert W. Service. London : T. Fisher Litwin. [2s. 6d. net.]-(18) Poems and a Drama. By Theodore van Beek. South Africa: no publisher.-(19) Hannibal: a Drama. By John Clark. Cape Town Darter Bros,-(20) Rivas Latina.: Verses 'and .Transla. am. By the late Edward Couolly. Oxford: B. IL Blackwell. [2s, net.]

"man." The first poem is a good specimen of the rest. The two figures of Titian's picture appear to the poet in a Roman garden, and hold out two different prospects before him.

Profane Love suggests that he should become a politician, and gives a most unattractive account of the pleasures of that career. Then Sacred Love has her innings, and easily wins with a picture of a quiet verse-making life in the country. It is

not a brilliant conception, but the execution is so tame and flat as to be almost comic. What imp induced Mr. Austin to describe a woman's corset as "compressing beaker for her brimming breasts." By dint of leaving out articles and prepositions be gives some of his verses the effect of baboo English. A misplaced conscientiousness makes him leave

nothing unexplained. "Your parent am I, though I seem so young," says Sacred Love with commendable prudence. Such a verse as this almost makes one wish that the arguments of Profane Love had triumphed :-

"Taught by the disentombed Miner van mind That, in the days still governing if gone, Within the rugged Parian block divined Majestic calmness of the Parthenon."

Elsewhere Mr. Austin is on the search for obvious prettinesses.

He reads in the papers that there has been a fall of snow in South Africa, and immediately treats the snow as a "pall" which is to cover the "Past." It is all too trite, too facile. He is not always as bad as this ; and at least one of the sonnets and the "Lines on the Chateau of the Loire" are simple and pleasing.

The second volume of Mr. John Davidson's sombre trilogy,

God and Mammon, is entitled Mammon and his Message.

After a careful study of both the epilogue and the poem we confess to complete ignorance of what that " message " may

be. The King, after murdering his father and brother,

proceeds to brain a Legate, torture an Archbishop, burn down an abbey, and seduce his friend's affianced bride. He talks a

great deal of ordinary Nietzschean stuff about how he has transcended all virtues and vices and driven Christ from the world; but there is no form or coherence anywhere. We turn to the epilogue for light, and find that Mr. Davidson's aim is to make for himself "a new form and substance of Imagination, and by poetic power certify the semi-certitudes of science." Well, this is at any rate a reasonable purpose ; but what puzzles us is what Mamtuon and his vapouring have

got to do with it. Parts of that epilogue, particularly the account of the Cornish fair, show how admirable an artist Mr. Davidson is, and make us regret that he should waste his fine talents in such barren quests. There is also much splendid rhetoric and some poetry in the poem itself, and there is one brilliant scene,-Mammon's interview with the women of the town. Even a turgid " message " cannot prevent Mr. Davidson from writing such blank verse as

this :-

"And here am I, with power to alter time From that old wiseacre of scythe and sand, To youth and fervour, beauty and delight, A damsel mantled in eternity,

Who takes no turning into narrow ways, But singing clearly in the constant dawn, Before the splendid world by royal roads Moves ever onward to an unknown goal."

After Mr. Davidson's exuberance it is pleasant to turn to the gentle classical Muse of Mr. Bourdillon. His Preludes and Romances consist of four tales, mediaeval and classical, with preludes to each describing the conditions under which the story was told. These preludes are admirably done,-full of close, and, what is rarer, closely reasoned, observation and of

musical phrasing. Of the romances we prefer " Chryseis," which is a subtle version of the Homeric tale. Mr. Ficke's The Earth Passion has much of the same quality. He gives us delicately etched pictures, which live in the memory because of their delicacy. In a robustious strain he can be very bad, and his "Viking's Song" has no possible kinship with any- thing viking. But his lyrics of natural beauty have caught the

glamour of their subject; his elegy on Keats is melodious and stately; and the lines "On Having Known an Astronomer" are sufficient by themselves to make the little book remark- able. Charming, too, in another vein, is the "Child's Prayer." Mr. Harberton Lulham's Songs from the Downs and Dunes have got the same quality of reasoned observation which we have noted in Mr. Bourdillon. Ife not only sees, but he can think out his picture. He is best when he is homeliest, and

gives full scope to his passionate love of his own countryside. "On the Downs" is the longest and the finest poem in the book, and in it, besides many passages of noble blank verse, there are one or two exquisite lyrics. The man who can write such a fine reflective poem as "The Many Deaths," and such a passionate cry as" Belle Sauvage," should have a future before

him as a poet. Homelier, less skilful; but inspired with the *tame intense love of Nature are Miss Alice Law's Songs of the Uplands. We like her best when she is writing short-lined irregular verse, as in the poems "To Piers Plowman" and "The Cup-Bearer's Song." To turn to Mr. Wilfrid Gibson's The Web of Life is to pass from the natural

to the literary imagination. There is no roughness or lameness in his accomplished art, but we do not feel the force of a spontaneous impulse. A fine piece of verse like "In the Forest" is rather the work of a man of letters than of a poet. We prefer him in pieces like "In the Orchard," where a common mood is sung in very musical stanzas. Miss

Buckton's Songs of Joy contains some good devotional verse, especially the poems "My Daily Grace" and "Midday Silence."

Her fancy, however, fails in precision, and her images are too nebulous to arrest the reader's mind. Precision, on the other band, is almost the only quality in Mr. Arthur Lewis's little book, Enamels. He etches his tiny pictures with meticulous care, but they stand meaningless and unrelated,—not poetry, but its raw material.

The next six volumes on our list are local poetry,—Devonian,

Scottish, and Irish. Much the beat is Mr. Arthur L. Salmon's West-Country Verses. His Devon ballads are as dialect poetry

not far removed from Barnes's Dorset ; and such a poem as "The Mouth of the Lyn" shows that be can write classic, English with equal skill The poems in Scottish dialect in the ,hook of the Glasgow Ballad Club are the least successful, though Mr. Robert Ford is now and then interesting. The model of the writers seems to be Tannahill rather than Burns. Mr. Neil Munro is not as good as in the former volume of the Club, but Mr. Risk, Mr. Bain, and notably Mr.

William Canton, contribute verses of much grace and charm. On the other hand, in Mr. David Lowe's Ballad of a Great City, and other Poems, the dialect verses are by far the best. The Glasgow poems are too local in their application for the ordinary reviewer, but some of the general verses deserve to rank among the most successful recent attempts in the Scottish

vernacular. Such a quatrain as this has the true idiomatic note :—

"My trews are jaupit to the seat, My buckled shoon rin like a ronn,

My guid grey plaid is waukin' weet, My bonnet blue will scarce bide on."

We may notice here a meritorious modernisation of The Hinge's Quair of King James I. of Scotland by Mr. W.

Maekean, of which our only complaint is that the modern version is scarcely less archaic than the original. Both of the Irish volumes before us contain the stuff of poetry. Miss

Montgomery's The Bose and the Fire is curious inasmuch as she writes of the subjects familiar among writers of the Celtic

renaissance in a simple and almost old-fashioned manner.

She has much to learn in craft, for often the language is too trite to be worthy of the powers of fancy behind; but the slim book is full of flue conceptions. Better, because more

concrete and real, is Mr. Padraic Colum's Wild Earth, where the lyrics have caught the very passion of the soil. "A

Drover" and "An Old Woman of the Roads" are two memorable portraits, and "The Man who Dreamt of Treasure" has the true glamour of the ballad.

The' three volumes which come to us from Britain overseas

are all notable in their way. Mr. Theodore van Beek, the author of Poems and a Drama, is, we understand, a young

South African scarcely out of his teens. His Muse is un- touched of modernity. Many influences appear in his work, but they are all of the old great masters, and especially of the greatest of alL Shakespeare is a good inspiration for a young man, and these poems, despite many technical faults and an occasional crudeness, have an elevation and wealth of fancy and thought which promise nobly for the future. We trust

that Mr. van Beek may do great things for South African literature. Mr. John Clark, daring much, hag written a drama on Hannibal, or rather—for there is no dramatic com- pleteness—he has strung together certain episodes from his -career in- dramatic form. His style is so fall of strahge words and constructions as to remind the reader of Mr. Charles Doughty. Sometimes he falls into bathos; but he has immense enthusiasm, and much power of reasoning in verse. We hope that he may select next time a more suitable medium for his talent than the drama. If Mr. Kipling had never written "The Feet of the Young Men," Mr. Service's Songs of a Sourdough would have taken a different form. "The Call of the Wild," "The Woman and the Angel," "The Lure of Little Voices," and a score of others are pure Kipling in manner. In manner only, let it be said, for Mr. Service has a very vigorous talent of his own. He has seen and suffered, and he has an uncanny power of gruesome word-painting, as in "The Lone Trail." At his best we should rank him high among modern poets of wild Nature, for he has that great essential of good literature,—something to say.

We have only space to commend heartily to all readers who care for delicate and scholarly Latin versions the small volume by the late Edward Conolly which Mr. Papillon has edited under the title of Nugae Latinae. Mr. Conolly wrote Latin as a living tongue, and his translations have the charm of original verse.