Nos. cxxi.-cxxii. ANDREW LANG. Mr. Andrew Lang has unmistakably made his mark' in contemporary English poetry, though not by his sonnets, for these could be numbered on the fingers. What he has done in this direction has been exceptionally good. I can at the moment call to remembrance no two lines of more musical vowellation than those in the octave of No. cxxi.—

The bones of Agamemnon are a show,
And ruined in his royal monument.

The striking sonnet on the death of Colonel Burnaby has
not appeared heretofore in any volume: it was published
last year in the columns of Punch. I have not included
another of Mr. Lang's best sonnets in the body of this
collection, simply because it has so often been reprinted
that all sonnet-lovers know it well already: but for those
who may not have met with it heretofore I may print it
here:-

THE ODYSSEY.

As one that for a weary space has lain

Lulled by the song of Circe and her wine
In gardens near the pale of Proserpine,
Where that aæan isle forgets the main,
And only the low lutes of love complain,

And only shadows of wan lovers pine,
As such an one were glad to know the brine
Salt on his lips, and the large air again,
So gladly, from the songs of modern speech
Men turn, and see the stars, and feel the free
Shrill wind beyond the close of heavy flowers,
And through the music of the languid hours,
They hear like ocean on a western beach

The surge and thunder of the Odyssey.

Nos. cxxiii.-cxxvi. EDWARD CRACROFT LEFROY, It is with pleasure that I draw attention to these four sonnets very fairly representative of the sonnet-work of the Rev. E. C. Lefroy. To Mr. Andrew Lang I am indebted for having brought Mr. Lefroy's work to my notice. This gentleman, whom delicate health has prevented pursuing further the clerical profession, may be considered the living poetical brother of Hartley Coleridge and Mr. Charles TennysonTurner to the work of the latter his sonnets bear an

especial affinity. Simple in language, genuine in feeling, and poetic in expression, they also fulfil the technical requirements of the legitimate sonnet. Of one thing only it seems to me Mr. Lefroy has need to beware-that he does not lapse into the fatal Wordsworthian habit of rhyming upon everything he sees or thinks of: as yet his bark is sailing safely enough in that disastrous neighbourhood, but once caught in the current-and there is an end of 'pure gems of white-heat thought carved delicately!' Mr. Lefroy in the first instance published his sonnets in four little pamphlets, variously priced at 3d. and 1s. each: they are separately entitled Echoes from Theocritus, Cytisus and Galingale, Windows of the Church, and Sketches and Studies. In 1885 he published, through Mr. Elliot Stock, a hundred sonnets under the title Echoes from Theocritus; and Other Sonnets, being the sonnets of the foregoing pamphlets with some pruning and re-arrangement. It is a volume that no lover of sonnet literature should be without.

The four which I have printed are all from the larger section of this volume (Miscellaneous Sonnets), so I may quote two from the delightful series of Echoes from Theocritus':

CLEONICUS.

(Epigram IX.)

Let sailors watch the waning Pleiades,

And keep the shore. This man, made over-bold
By Godless pride, and too much greed of gold,
Setting his gains before his health and ease,
Ran up his sails to catch the whistling breeze:
Whose corpse, ere now, the restless waves have rolled
From deep to deep, while all his freight, unsold,
Is tossed upon the tumult of the seas.

Such fate had one whose avaricious eyes
Lured him to peril in a mad emprise.

Yea, from the Syrian coast to Thesos bound,
He slipped his anchor with rich merchandise,
While the wet stars were slipping from the skies,

And with the drowning stars untimely drowned.

A SICILIAN NIGHT.

Come, stand we here within this cactus-brake,
And let the leafy tangle cloak us round.
It is the spot whereof the Seer spake-
To nymph and fawn a nightly trysting-ground.
How still the scene! No zephyr stirs to shake
The listening air. The trees are slumber-bound
In soft repose. There's not a bird awake
To witch the silence with a silver sound.

Now haply shall the vision trance our eyes,
By heedless mortals all too rarely scanned,
Of mystic maidens in immortal guise,

Who mingle shadowy hand with shadowy hand,
And moving o'er the lilies circle-wise,

Beat out with naked feet a saraband.

No. cxxvii. EARL OF LYTTON. Lord Lytton has written very few sonnets. This and the one on Public Opinion' are probably the two best.

DAVID M. MAIN. Mr, Main, whose name is so familiar to every student of sonnet literature, is not only able to judge but to write a sonnet himself. I regret that the two following sonnets only came to my notice when it was too late to insert them in the body of this book.

TO CHAUCER.

Chaucer! when in my breast, as autumn wanes,
Sweet Hope begins to droop-fair flower that grew
With the glad prime, and bloomed the summer
through-

Thou art my chiefest solace. It sustains

My faltering faith, which coming fogs and rains
Might else to their dull element subdue,
That the rude season's spite can ne'er undo
The spring perennial that in thee remains.
Nor need I stir beyond the cricket's chime
Here in this ingle-nook-the cuckoo's cry
Hushed on the hillside, meadows all forlorn-
To breathe the freshness of an April morn.
Mated with thee, thy cheerful minstrelsy
Feeding the vernal heart through winter's clime.

TO A FAVOURITE EVENING RETREAT, NEAR GLASGOW.

O loved wild hillside, that hast been a power
Not less than books, greater than preacher's art,
To heal my wounded spirit, and my heart
Retune to gentle thoughts, that hour on hour
Must languish in the city, like a flower

In wayside dust, while on the vulgar mart
We squander for scant gold our better part
From morn till eve, in frost, and sun, and shower!
My soul breaks into singing as I haste,

Day's labour ended, towards thy sylvan shrine
Of rustling beech, hawthorn, and eglantine;
And, wandering in thy shade, I dream of thee
As of green pastures 'mid the desert waste,

Wells of sweet water in the bitter sea.

It is now

Nos. cxxviii.-cxxxii. PHILIP BOURKE MARSTON. some seven or eight years ago since one winter evening, sitting with him before his studio fire, Rossetti asked me if I knew Philip Marston's work. It so happened that I did, at which Rossetti seemed greatly pleased, adding, "I consider him beyond all question the strongest among our minor bards: and as for his sonnets they are nearly always excellent, and very often in the highest degree admirable. I have the most genuine admiration for him, both as man and poet." Subsequently more thorough familiarity with all Mr. Marston's work has left upon me an abiding impression of a true poetic genius exercising itself within circumscribed limits. Mr. Marston's chief drawback-from the point of view of the general reader-is monotony of theme, though in his latest volume he has done much to obviate this objection. This, and his undoubted overshadowing by the genius of the greatest sonnet-writer of our day, are probably the reasons for his comparatively restricted reputation. Curiously enough, Mr. Marston is inuch better known and more widely read in America than here; indeed he is undoubtedly the most popular of all our younger men oversea. Throughout all his work-for the most part very beautiful-there is exquisite sensitiveness to the delicate hues and gradations of colour in sky and on earth, all the more noteworthy from the fact of the author's misfortune of blindness. Had it not been for this "indifferent cruelty of cruel fate," Mr. Marston would almost certainly have gained a far wider reputation than it has been his lot to obtain. No student of contemporary poetry should omit

perusal of his three volumes, Song-Tide, All in All, and Wind-Voices.

Nos. cxxxiii.-cxxxiv. WESTLAND MARSTON, LL.D. Many years have elapsed since The Patrician's Daughter, Strathmore, and other fine plays from the same hand were widely popular. But if the dramatic work of Dr. Marston is now seldom seen represented on the stage, that pure and wholesome writer has still a large chamber-audience. His plays are the work not only of a man of the world but of a poet and a philosopher, the latter in its true sense. He can best be read, now, in the Selected Dramatic Work and Poems, published a year or two ago in two vols., by Messrs. Chatto & Windus. No. cxxxv. GEORGE MEREDITH. Mr. Meredith's fame-a steadily, and rapidly increasing fame-as the most brilliant living master of fiction, has overshadowed his claims as a poet. Out of the hundreds who have read and delighted in The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, in Evan Harrington in Rhoda Fleming, etc., there are probably only two or three here and there who before the recent issue of Poems and Lyrics of the Joy of Earth knew that Mr. Meredith had written verse at all. Yet two very noteworthy little volumes had previously-the first a long time before-seen the light. In the second, entitled Modern Love: and other Poems, there is a very remarkable sequence of sixteen line poems comprised under the heading Modern Love.' sad enough story is told therein, with great skill, and much poetic beauty. I had always imagined them to have been sonnets on the model of the Italian "sonnet with a tail," but Mr. Meredi th tells me that they were not designed for that form. As, however, for all their structural drawbacks they are in other things essentially 'caudated sonnets,' I may quote the following fine examples :

MODERN LOVE.

XVI.

In our old shipwreck'd days there was an hour
When in the firelight steadily aglow,

Join'd slackly, we beheld the chasm grow
Among the clicking coals. Our library-bower
That eve was left to us: and hush'd we sat
As lovers to whom Time is whispering.

From sudden-opened doors we heard them sing:

A