A BOOK OF VERSES.* At this time of over-production of waste-basket rhyme, it is pleasant to welcome a real addition to the poetry of the day by one who furnishes Such a welcome may be given These verses are collected in ample evidence of the true poetic gift. heartily to Mr. Henley's Book of Verses. three divisions: In Hospital, Rhymes and Rhythms; Life and Death (Echoes); and Bric-à-brac. One needs not the subscription, "The Old Infirmary, Edinburgh," placed at the end of the first division, to tell that its verses describe a hard personal experience and the reflections that came to a suffering patient during a tedious recovery from a serious and painful operation. The theme is not a tempting one. A man, evidently the poet, is taken to the hospital, is chloroformed, undergoes an operation, awakes to a “dull, new pain," and then awaits a slow return to the liberty of his fellowmen. While he muses the fire burns. It is not so strange, after all, that the poetic fire should be kindled and fed in such an atmosphere. The pathos and pain of life seem to lend themselves more readily to the poet's uses than life's joy and brightness. Yet we must not expect from a hospital bed an exuberant optimism. It is scarcely the place for the birth of the poetry of hope and cheer. We cannot be surprised at the sombre hue of the thoughts that find such vigorous expression in the verses before us. The imprisoned poet had plenty of time to observe carefully the persons and scenes which he describes with a terseness that shows his power. With a few rapid master-strokes he depicts the attendants, his neighbors, the shuffling eager crowd of students, the calm, skilful surgeon, the clinic, two sick children, a would-be suicide. At length there comes the exultation of his discharge, and then the strangeness of the common sights and sounds of the outside world, after the long quiet of the hospital walls. In all there is very decided poetic power. The reader is not loath to pass on to the poems of Life and Death. The very first of these enchants him. It would be pleasant to quote it. There is a charm in its three stanzas that cannot be described. Only a sad personal experience would account for the more than minor key of the second. Certainly it is not the universal experience that "Love must wither, or must live alone and weep." There is a fine Stoicism in Number IV., one of the strongest in the collection. Its date probably brings it within the hospital period. It is soon followed by another in which brave Stoicism gives way to a sad despair. Turn another page, and hope smiles again in three sweet stanzas. Number XVII. might have been written by Heine, but not improved by the German. In it a joyful major song is brought to a tearful conclusion by a single minor chord. Indeed, through all these Echoes, there is much in form and tone to remind of the German poet, without any suggestion of imitation. The Bric-à-Brac bring us into a close contact with nature-nature outside of ourselves—and have, consequently, a more gladsome ring. As poetry, these verses deserve almost unqualified * A Book of Verses. By W. E. Henley. London, 1888: David Nutt. praise. They have a vigor of thought, an unusualness of diction, often a melodiousness of rhyme, that excite admiration. There is much more than versification here. As it seems to the reviewer, there is poetry of uncommon merit, as well as the earnest of a still richer, and, let us hope, a more buoyant, contribution to the delight of all lovers of true poetry. It may not be out of place to urge Mr. Henley to make the philosophy of his next verses more cheerful. One quotation may find a place. It is from the next to last poem of the collection. 66 In the three collections of poems that lie at hand from the pen of Mr. Gilder, it may be somewhat arbitrary to adduce specific selections as a basis for comment. Still, no extended work of poet or prose-writer can be expected to be uniformly good, or good throughout, in the same sense. Hence, in The New Day, we read with peculiar pleasure such examples as The Prelude," "Interludes" and " After Song," "Words Without Song," "The Unknown Way," and "When the Last Doubt is Doubted." In The Celestial Passion, we note "The Prelude," "Holy Land," "To Rest from Weary Work," "Love and Death," "Beyond the Branches of the Pine," and “Undying Light." In Lyrics, we mark "A Song of Early Autumn," " After Sorrow's Night," "The Homestead," "The Poet's Fame," and "When the True Poet Comes." In this era of what the English students would call Nonsense Verse, and what we may be allowed to call unpoetic, it is refreshing to read poetry that is out-and-out poetry, rather than prose, or rather than some undefinable product not yet classified. In the reading of these poems, we have been often reminded of the rhythmical resonance of Swinburne, of the deep and pervasive pathos of Mrs. Browning, and of the spiritual purity of Keats. We indicate, just here, the three radical features of the author's verse, and, as far as they go, they belong to the first order of poetic art. They are rhythm, passion, and purity. The one expresses, in a measure, the external, as the others express the internal, characteristics of genuine song. All such verse pleases the ear, and stirs and elevates the soul; and when the inner sense and spirit of the lines blend in fullest measure with the outer melody, the result can be nothing less than the most pronounced æsthetic pleasure. These poems evince what Mr. Arnold would *The New Day. 1887 The Century Co. The Celestial Passion. Lyrics. By R. W. Gilder. New York, call a "sense of beauty," that deep poetic undertone that lies below all poetic art, and makes the poetry what it is. They evince more than this—a sense of sympathy and purity and spiritual power, throbbing like a heartbeat through every line and letter. They are, in Miltonic phrase, “sensuous and passionate," never descending to the low emotional level of the fleshly school, but clear and clean and healthful to the end. To adopt the author's phrase, the passion is "celestial " rather than earthly, and lifts the soul that feels its power, to higher planes of thought and outlook. The range of the poems, either in a mental or a literary point of view, is not a spacious one. The three collections are alike lyrical, and, whether as to conception or final motive, rarely pass beyond the province of poetic sentiment. There is nothing here of the epic excellence of Tennyson or the dramatic skill of Robert Browning, but there is genuine poetry, simple, natural, tender, and persuasive, a lyric charm of idea and rendering quite too infrequent in modern As we turn the pages, we quote a passage or two : "I am the spirit of the morning sea; verse. I am the awakening and the glad surprise ; I fill the skies With laughter and with light." "Like a violet, like a lark, Like the dawn that kills the dark, Like a dew-drop trembling, clinging, Through love to light! Oh, wonderful the way What exquisite harmony and what high poetic sentiment are here! Epics and dramas have their place in literature, but what is poetry, after all, but the deepest experience of the human heart written and voiced in the forms of beauty! It is what a poet-critic has recently designated it, “impassioned truth." STEVENSON'S ESSAYS.* THE author of Prince Otto and the New Arabian Nights is found, in his essays, in his best narrative and descriptive mood. As voluminous as he has been of late in prose and verse, in satire, story, and song, the reading public are still demanding more and more from his fertile pen. In the thirty papers making up the volumes before us, there is, as the author states, a 66 *Memoirs and Portraits. Virginibus Puerisque. By Robert L. Stevenson. New York, 1887: Charles Scribner's Sons. certain thread of meaning," or, as he further states, "they are like milestones on the wayside of life." A few of these papers may be selected as specimens of that light and chatty style of which Mr. Stevenson is a master. In "The Foreigner at Home," he gives us a suggestive contrast between the Englishman and the Scotchman, as the one inquires, "What is your name?" and the other, "What is the chief end of man?" In "College Memories," the author takes occasion to emphasize the debt of gratitude which the student owes to the faithful instructor, and adds some timely hints as to the relation of study to physical health. In "Talk and Talkers," we have portrayed, in the characters of Jack, Burly, Cockshot, and others, the typical conversationalists of society, in the course of which description no opportunity is lost of thrusting at those loquacious prattlers; the more they say, the less they say. In "Truth of Intercourse," it is well remarked "that the difficulty of literature is, not to write, but to write what you mean." In "An Apology for Idlers," the author is at his best in the sphere of paradox and half-truths, not infrequently passing beyond the limits of accurate ethical teaching. It is, however, with the æsthetics rather than with the ethics of these papers that we are dealing. With this in view, we note the freedom and finish of their literary form. Presented in plain and colloquial English, they carry their own praise with them, and are directly in the line of what may be termed the prevailing fashion of "putting things." Literary fashions, as other fashions, come and go, and with as little reason. We are living, at present, in the Golden Age of Descriptive Miscellany. He who wishes to be read, must write as Mr. Stevenson has here written, on topics germane to the hour and in a style comprehensible at sight. Intellectually stimulating modern prose may or may not be. It must be readable. Before the close of the century, perhaps, the mode may change, and writers and readers alike be asked to do more "high thinking." BOOKS RECEIVED, Of which there may be critical notice hereafter. ABBOTT.-Commentary on Romans, pp. viii. 230. Illustrated. Chicago & New York, 1888: A. S. Barnes & Co. ALLEN.-The Tariff and its Evils, pp. viii., 122. New York and London, 1888: G. P. Putnam's Sons. BIERBOWER.-Ethics for Schools, pp. 294. Chicago, 1888: George Sherwood & Co. BRADFORD.-Spirit and Life, pp. 265. New York, 1888: Fords, Howard & Hulbert. CARLYLE.-Reminiscences, edited by C. E. Norton, pp. vii., 325. London, 1887: Macmillan & Co. CLARK.-Witnesses to Christ, pp. 300. Chicago, 1888: A. C. McClurg & Co. CRANE.-The Eneid of Virgil, pp. xxxviii. 258. New York, 1888: The Baker and Taylor Co. DE GASPARIN.-Under French Skies, pp. 303. New York, 1888: The Baker and Taylor Co. HAMILTON.-The Federalist, edited by H. C. Lodge, pp. xxi., 586. New York, 1888: G. P. Putnam's HARVARD VESPERS.-Addresses to Harvard Students, pp. 233. Boston, 1888: Roberts Bros. New York and London: G. P. Putnam's INGE.-Society in Rome under the Cæsars, pp. xii. 276. New York, 1888: Charles Scribner's Sons. LELAND. -Practical Education, pp. xiii. 280. London, 1888: Whittaker & Co. Philadelphia, 1888: Press of J. B. Lippincott. in Verse, pp. vi. 78. Cambridge, 1888: Riverside Press. MOORE.-Book of Day Dreams, pp. C. New York and London, 1888: G. P. Putnam's Sons. Chicago and New York, 1888: Fleming H. SHANKS AND MOODY.-A College of Colleges, pp. 288. SMITH AND WACE.-Dictionary of Christian Biography, vol. iv. N-Z, pp. xiii. 1227. London, 1887: John TOLSTOY.-Life, pp. 295. New York, 1888: T. Y. Crowell & Co. TUTTLE.-History of Prussia. Frederick the Great, two volumes, 1740-1745, 1745-1756, pp. xxiv, 308 and pp. xii. 334. Boston, 1888: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. WAUGH.-Messiah's Mission, pp. 164. Rochester, N. Y., 1888: E. R. Andrews. |