Poems by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. This volume is printed with
the approval of Mr. Robert Browning. (Smith, Elder, and Co.) —The advertisement tells us that "this volume is printed from the edition of Mrs. Browning's works published in 1836. It contains numerous and important additions and alterations made for that edition, which are copyright. A volume recently issued by Messrs. Routledge and Sons is printed from a book published in 1844, the copyright of which has expired, and does not contain any of the additions and alterations subsequently made by the author." It is printed with exquisite clearness, and in a very neat and portable form, like the shape given to the same publishers' pocket edition of Thackeray. It contains, with a great number of shorter poems, the "Drama of Exile" and "The Seraphim," Mrs. Browning's two mystical dramas, which are certainly very unfavourable specimens of her genius. Nothing will ever persuade a true critic that verse of the following kind is poetry " Leer, work on, 0 Earthy,
By the Actual's tension, Speed the arrow worthy Of a pare ascension..
Yet of such stuff there is too mach in these dramas, though there is, of course, mach also of a far truer ore. But the contrast between these, even at their best, and such poems as "Lady Geraldine's Courtship " or " The Romanist of the Swan's Nest" is so striking, that one wonders how a genius no concrete should ever try to gasp in the thin air of the abstract.
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