A Poet's Harvest-Home. Being One Hundred Short Poems. By William
Bell Scott, H.R.S.A., LL.D. With an Aftermath of Twenty Short Poems. (Mathews and Lane.)—Mr. Bell Scott's "Autobiographic Notes," published six or seven months ago, called forth a large amount of invective not wholly undeserved from men who, like Mr.,Swinburne, had previously praised him. His defects were intensified, his merits but faintly acknowledged, so that an ignorant reader might have thought that he was one of the most contemptible of mortals. The friend, however, of some of the most notable artists and men of letters of the day could not himself have been insignificant. He had his weak points, no doubt, as an artist and a poet, and he had his prejudices. No one will accuse him of too much modesty; but Scott was a man of varied gifts, and to keep to the text of the little volume before us, he has some claim to be classed among the minor poets of his country. We do not think that it is a high one, but there can be no doubt that he has written verses which a century ago would have given him no insignificant place in anthologies. He wanted humour,—a fault which he shares with much greater poets, but that he was not without imagination is proved by his address, "To the Sphinx," and, despite of metrical defects, by his sonnet, " The Universe Void." A Poet's Harvest-Home was published eleven years ago, and its reproduction does not call for criticism, neither does the " Aftermath," which contains some good versifi- cation, but is otherwise wholly without significance. To some purchasers of the volume its merit may be found in the fact that only three hundred copies have been printed.
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