who, I remember, was just such an illuminated hero, with two birthdays in one year."

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Some of the criticisms in art and literature are equally keen. A good many of us who have read them will agree with him when he rails at "those deplorable tedious lamentations · Clarissa' and Sir Charles Grandison.”” Americans cannot fail to be interested in one feature of these volumes, a feature which strikes one more in the condensed work than in the bulky original, that is, the breadth and insight of Walpole's views regarding the Revolution. He says truly enough that "from the hour that fatal egg, the stamp act, was laid," he disliked it. He adds bitterly:

"I now hear many curse it who fed the vermin with poisonous weeds. Yet the guilty and innocent rue it alike. Oh, where is the dove with the olive branch? Long ago, I told you that you and I might not live to see an end of the American war. It is very near its end, indeed, now-its consequences are far from a conclusion. In some respects, they are commencing a new date, which will reach far beyond us."

Walpole is not commonly rated as a hero; but I never read any number of his Letters written during the old age which he had dreaded, without receiving the impression of something heroic and pathetic both in our friend. He is so resolutely cheerful, making as little moan as a Spartan over his own pains of mind or body, and with such a capacious sympathy for others' troubles. To the very end, after his own fashion, he is a patriot; and far more effectually than Sir Charles Grandison, he embodies the eighteenth century ideal of a fine gentleman. OCTAVE THANET.

RECENT BOOKS OF POETRY.*

The season that witnesses the appearance of a new volume bearing the name of Mr. William Morris is hardly less memorable than that in which a new work of Lord Tennyson or Mr.

A TALE OF THE HOUSE OF THE WOLFINGS and All the Kindreds of the Mark. Written in Prose and in Verse by William Morris. Boston: Roberts Brothers.

ELEUSIS: A Poem. Chicago: Privately Printed.

Swinburne sees the light. In opening this review of the poetry of recent months, there can be no question that the place of honor belongs to the author of "The Earthly Paradise." Yet at first sight we hesitate in our classification of the new work, for the form in which it is shaped is verse and prose commingled, with even a preponderance of the latter. The proportion of verse is, however, sufficiently large to silence our scruples upon the subject, weakened as those scruples are by a sense of the wonderfully poetic character of the prose in which Mr. Morris tells much of his story. While we attach too much importance to the purely formal definition of poetry to be willing to use that word as a description of Mr. Morris's prose, we must admit that if any prose could fairly claim to be called poetry, it would be such prose as that in which the following passage is written :

"Then she turned toward Thiodolf with a calm and solemn face, though it was very pale and looked as if she would not smile again. Elfric had risen up and was standing by the board speechless, and the passion of sobs still struggling in her bosom. She put him aside gently, and went up to Thiodolf and stood above him, and looked down on his face awhile; then she put forth her hand and closed his eyes, and stooped down, and kissed his face. Then she stood up again and faced the Hall, and looked and saw that many were streaming in, and that though the smoke was still eddying overhead, the fire was well-nigh quenched within; and without the sound of battle had sunk and died away. For indeed the Markmen had ended their day's work before noontide that day, and the more part of the Romans were slain, and to the rest they had given peace till the Folk-mote should give Doom concerning them; for pity of these valiant men was growing in the hearts of the valiant men who had vanquished them, now that they feared them no more."

"A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and All the Kindreds of the Mark" is a story of the Roman invasion of Germany and of the Teutonic victory over the invading host. For the purpose of telling the story, Mr. Morris may almost be said to have invented a new literary form, for, while his work is strongly suggestive of the saga and the mediæval epic, it is not distinctly imitative of those species of composition, but has a freshness and an indi

Schüttenhofen: A. Jansky.

SPRING AND SUMMER; or, Blushing Hours. By William T. Washburn. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.

GETTYSBURG AND OTHER POEMS. By Isaac R. Pennypacker. Philadelphia: Porter & Coates.

POEMS. By John Hay. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. AUSTRALIAN POETS, 1788-1888. Edited by Douglas B. W. Sladen, B.A. New York: Cassell Publishing Co.

THE WORKS OF LEWIS MORRIS. New York: Longmans, Green, & Co.

cabulary, and touched with a primitive emotion befitting its theme-that of the childhood of a race, it has yet the sure poetic vision and deeply sympathetic feeling of the modern artist; it gleams with a light that never, perhaps, was on either saga or popular epic. We have given an illustration of the poetic prose which forms a setting for the verse interludes

of the narrative; it remains to make an extract from one of those interludes. The following will, perhaps, do as well as any, for it is difficult to find a passage that may be taken apart from the context without a considerable loss of force. Our extract is from the words of the Hall-Sun-the vestal seeress of the Wolfing tribe-spoken over the bodies of the slain chiefs.

"O kindreds, here before you two mighty bodies lie; Henceforth no man shall see them in house and field go by, As we were used to behold them, familiar to us then, As the wind beneath the heavens and the sun that shines on men;

Now soon shall there be nothing of their dwelling-place to tell,

Save the billow of the meadows, the flower-grown grassy swell!

Now therefore, O ye kindreds, if amidst you there be one Who hath known the heart of the War-dukes, and the deeds their hands have done,

Will not the word be with him, while yet your hearts are hot,

Of our praise and long remembrance, and our love that dieth not?

Then let him come up hither and speak the latest word O'er the limbs of the battle-weary and the hearts outworn with the sword."

That the work which contains these lines is a noble piece of imaginative literature, no one may doubt who reads it. "The House of the Wolfings" is the work of a great poet, of one of the greatest poets of our age. The volume in which it appears is a beautiful piece of book-making, and has a striking photogravure portrait of the author. The "Athenæum" review of the work-in which the master-hand of Mr. Theodore Watts is very evident-is printed as an appendix, and may be said to be as good criticism as the book itself is good poetry.

The remarkable volume of anonymous verse bearing the simple title "Eleusis: A Poem " calls for more than a word of mention. The work is divided into three cantos, each consisting of a prelude followed by a group of poems varying in length, and it is all written in the familiar stanzaic form of "In Memoriam." The form thus consecrated by the noblest English poem of our age is one not to be lightly attempted even by the tried singer, and he is bold indeed who takes for his model not merely the form but the spirit of that poem as well. Yet this the author of Eleusis" has done, and done so well that his work is not wholly obscured even by the radiance of its high prototype. In its composition, the influence of "In Memoriam" must be admitted once for all. Without In Memoriam" no section or even stanza of "Eleusis" could possibly have been

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written. The cadence of the older poem is followed; its concentration and truncation of thought is copied; its peculiarities of style, of construction, and of figure are reproduced, and likewise its searching pathos, its measureless yearnings, and its sublimely prophetic vision. It is hardly necessary to say that the two poems exhibit these qualities in widely differing degrees; the striking fact to be noted is that they are all present, in some degree, in the lesser and newer work. And this does not condemn the poem, as might at first appear; for, although imitative, it is a strong and beautiful piece of work, and at its best it offers verse which few poets might not be justly proud to claim. To us, the poem is at its best in such a passage as the following, descriptive of the world's great men :

"To such the web more intricate

Of human thought reveals its clue,
And keen their insight to construe
What others bare enigmas rate.
"These measure hearts and fathom seas
Of mental ebb and moral flow,
And by unerring plummet know
What purpose rules, what motives please;
"Thus holding hidden reins of power

They leap to empire; hap they climb
To thrones commensurate with time;
Or wear the warrior's laurel flower;
"Or, nobler, up the esplanade

Whereon great Learning rears her dome
They go sublime, and find a home
Eternal in her proud arcade.

"Imperial pediments uphold

Their sculptured effigies, and high
Memorial columns kiss the sky.
While history writes their names in gold.

"The true Illuminati they ;

Their demons not the shades that prest
At some magician's base behest
From the deep regions of decay,

"But such as his who far-so far

Transcended all the storied past,
Out-reasoned Reason, and at last
Glows ancient Athens' brightest star."

The Tennysonian affinities of these verses are evident enough, yet we must admit that they do more than echo the thought of "In Memoriam." Sometimes, indeed, there is little but the echo, as in this stanza :

"For Nature hath a step of steel

To crush her children when they cry;
They plead, and pleading yet must lie
Beneath her feet who cannot feel."

Occasionally the echo is of another poet than
Tennyson; of Arnold, in this stanza:

"The instinctive passion to be free

Alone prevents our death in life;
And in a never-ending strife
We fight with foes we cannot see."

And of Swinburne or Emerson in this:

"For I who hear am he who sings;

And what is sung, that too is Me; For I am one and yet am three,The listener, singer, and the strings." But allowing for all this more or less inevitable reproduction of the thought of other poets, “Eleusis” offers a sufficient residuum of original expression to make it a noteworthy production, and one which we would gladly illustrate at greater length than we are enabled here to do. The magnificent picture of a Roman Triumph, for example, or the tender elegy that brings the volume to a close, are richly deserving of quotation; but for them the reader must be referred to the volume itself, of which

we hope that he may be fortunate enough to

get possession.

Among minor volumes of verse, there is one that comes to us all the way from Bohemia, a pamphlet entitled "Bohemian Legends and Ballads," the work of Mr. F. P. Kopta. Unfortunately, Mr. Kopta's ambition outruns both his knowledge of the English language and the resources of his printing-office, and the result is very amusing. We read in these pages of how John Huss was tortured "with gibs and curse," and with many other cheerful matters. The writer is insistent in the avowal that he will not forget his native land, wherever he may roam. He tells us, indeed, that "Memory shall wander back at will, Amidst thy forests and thy fields, And I shall see each well-known hill, And listen to the echoes peals."

Mr. Washburn's "Spring and Summer; or, Blushing Hours" (we are haunted by that mysterious sub-title) shows the writer to be an industrious poet, if not a tuneful one. The volume has more than four hundred pages, into which we dive at random, and bring up this gem of ray serene :

"Then Linda from its scabbard's lair

Drew forth a dagger sharp;
Between his neck and shoulder bare
A stroke she struck so fair,

It made his body warp."

Mr. Isaac R. Pennypacker has collected a few of his random thoughts, sawn them into suitable lengths, and published the product as "Gettysburg and Other Poems." We do not get far into the volume before we come to an inn-keeper, who is looking out upon the road—

"O'er which, in state, some hours before,
A coach, drawn by four horses gray,
No other than the Governor,

Refreshed, had borne upon his way.
Well might the host recount his gain
From meat and drink for all that train."

This will do for a sample. We hope that our readers will not give it up too hastily, for it really does mean something, and that is more than can always be said even of the verses of the late Mr. Browning.

Among recent collections of verse not now published for the first time, we note one or two John Hay include the familiar and popular "Pike County Ballads," a series of "Wanderlieder" which display a somewhat fiery republicanism, a few translations from Heine and others, and a considerable number of miscellaneous pieces. Mr. Hay's work is always facile and sometimes impressive, and deserves the pretty dress in which it now appears.

volumes of interest. The "Poems of Mr.

Mr. Douglas B. W. Sladen's "Australian Poets" is the third collection of the sort which he has edited. It is a more extensive collection than its predecessors, and also more comprehensive, for they were made to include only poems inspired by life in Australia and New Zealand, while this finds room for poems upon other subjects, although all the poems included, we are given to understand, have been "produced in the Antipodes." An essay "Concerning Australian Poets" is contributed by Mr. Arthur Patchett Martin. Both the editor and his essayist are enthusiastic in their praise of Australian song, rather more so than the merits of the product warrant; but we are glad to have such a collection, and glad that it has been prepared by hands so compe

tent.

As our article was opened with a review of the new volume of Mr. William Morris, it is quite fitting that it should be closed with a refence to Mr. Lewis Morris, whom some innocent persons, who have never read the work of either, or to whom prose and poetry are much the same thing, are wont to confuse with his great namesake. A neatly-printed volume just received contains the entire works of the industrious Welshman whose name has been suggested, and, we believe, seriously, as that of a possible successor to the Laureate. We have now the "Songs of Two Worlds" (all three series), "The Epic of Hades,” “ Gwen,” "The Ode of Life," Songs Unsung" (alas, that they should belie their name in one sense and not in another), "Gycia," and "Songs of Britain." And all this work is so conscientious, and yet so hopelessy imitative and commonplace!

WILLIAM MORTON PAYNE.

BRIEFS ON NEW BOOKS.

SIR CHARLES DILKE and his publishers have both challenged a dangerous comparison in his latest volume, "Problems of Greater Britain" (Macmillan). Not only is the book bound uniform with Mr. Bryce's "The American Commonwealth," but both works are laid out on the same lines. Sir Charles attempts to do for colonial Britain what Mr. Bryce has so brilliantly done for the United States, under the three identical heads of survey of the political institutions, survey of the society, and outlook for the future. The challenge is bold, but it is fairly well met. Dilke's volume will not only take its place on the shelf beside "The American Commonwealth," but it will also maintain a position as a companion treatise on that other half of the English outland race. The point of approach for the two works is somewhat different. Mr. Bryce published in the centennial year of our Federal Government; there is a consequent attitute of historic looking backward even in his description, and his glance into the future is keen but brief. Sir Charles Dilke, whose thoughtful essays on "The British Army," contributed to the Fortnightly Review" during 1888, presented him to a world to which he had just returned from "Coventry" as an alarmist in the most patriotic sense of that word, maintains that attitude of mind in the book under review, and consequently glances into the future with prolonged and, we believe, penetrating vision. Mr. Bryce was happy in a subject which was a unit; Sir Charles is embarrassed with a fourfold field of unrelated actions; yet each section-whether on Canada, Australia, South Africa, or India-is a masterly treatise in itself. The range is enormous, and no man can master it as Bryce has mastered our political and social life; yet since Dilke published his "Greater Britain" he has twice gone round the globe, and this new work is the result largely of personal observation, shrewdly and patiently made. Remarkably accurate and unprejudiced in its statements, it shows that the author shares with the great writer with whom he challenges comparison that habit of mind so rarely attained to by Englishmen-non-insularity. Slight confusions, like that of the Canadian with the Newfoundland Labrador, only make one wonder more at the large grasp of details over so large a portion of the earth, and one lays down the 700 crowded pages with admiration for this profound and statesmanlike contribution to the library of civics. The author finds much to praise in the Canadian system of federation, and considers a plan which has united under one fairly harmonious government three hostile races and two warring religions, and which gives to the central authority immense prerogatives and large opportunity of energetic action, whilst retaining for the constituent provinces a perfect local freedom, "the ideal of a federal power as traced by Tocqueville." He thinks that the concessions made by the State to Roman Catholicism and to the

French language, in view of the rapidly increasing French and Romish population, will ever hold the vote of the influential province of Quebec against annexation to the United States. Very forcibly is brought out the one-man nature of the Dominion

Government under that American Bismarck-Sir John McDonald. Neither annexation to the United States nor separation from England seem necessary future events to Sir Charles, but he rather looks to see Canada "work out a prosperous destiny for herself under her present relations with the British Crown," for it is largely the crown which holds English and Methodist Ontario and Romish and French Quebec in harmonious union. Imperial Federation

Sir Charles Dilke does not believe in as a future cement for Britain and Greater Britain. But Federalism of the Canadian type for Australia and South Africa, and a generous recognition of racial differences at the Cape and in India, with the representative principle gradually conceded to Boers and to "National Congresses," will do much, in his view, to form four great federations centering in English blood and English influence, which shall for long recognize in the allied mother country the power which makes them united irresistible, until the day when they can stand beside her in their strength, no longer as children, but as allies of common blood, in a degree, and of common interests throughout. But to this end he maintains that these colonies should make themselves ready for that day by an immediate strengthening of their armaments and fostering of their own citizen-soldiery. Sir Charles is too wise a student of human and national ambitions to believe in the near approach of a general disarmament of nations, and, biding the postponed arrival of that much-to-bedesired consummation, suggests the motto of Semper Paratus even for commercially-inclined peoples.

EVEN the driest and most abstruse subjects seem capable of being made simple and clear, provided the person dealing with them knows enough about them. A man must have lived long and lovingly with his theme, before he is able to distinguish the essential from the non-essential, before he acquires the sure instinct teaching him what details are to be shown in light, and what to be left in shadow. This is especially true of abridgments or "Primers" of great themes, and only those learned in all the lore of their subject are successful condensers. A very happy example of the simple and vivid treatment of a far-away and difficult subject is the late Professor William F. Allen's " Short History of the Roman People" (Ginn). Professor Allen's range of studies was very wide, as readers of his contributions to THE DIAL need not be told. Yet, in one sense, this Roman history was his life-work, since it was in the making during nearly all the years of his literary activity. The closing days of his life, in December, 1889, were given to the revision of the proof-sheets of this work, which, so far back as 1854, he had confided to a friend as being a cher

ished project. Soon after, he spent a winter in Rome, studying its topography and building up in his mind a picture of the Eternal City in the days of its glory. The task he proposed to himself was, to know the civilization of Rome in the middle ages

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To know its events, its personages, its literature, its thought in every department-political, religious, philosophical-its science, its industry and art; and then to be familiar with the manifestations of all these in the every-day life of the people, the manners and customs, the dress and furniture, the institutions and modes of procedure, the transient phases of thought and tricks of speech." Such an ideal as this, without haste in the execution, and from one of such genuine scholarship, have combined to produce a work which is to be praised not only for its special purpose, "for colleges and high schools," but for its attractions to the general reader. As its title indicates, it is a history of the Roman people rather than of Roman kings and emperors. The influence of economic conditions, the causes of the failure of self-government, the effect of foreign relations, are traced in a manner very unusual in ancient history, and the modern student of such themes will find here much valuable material. References to carefully-selected historical novels and to popular works for collateral reading are another valuable feature, while the illustrations and maps show great wisdom and care in selection. The book consists of 350 pages, and may be had either alone or bound with President Myers's "The Eastern Nations and Greece,"- the two forming Parts I. and II. of "Ancient History."

DR. HENRY M. FIELD'S " Bright Skies and Dark Shadows" (Scribner) is the literary outcome of a winter tour through the Southern States. The "shadows are cast, as may be surmised, by the Race Problem-to the present aspects and future possibilities of which the author devotes the more serious portion of his book. The volume is marked by Dr. Field's usual kindly good sense, and honest desire, where debatable questions arise, to fairly set forth the views of all parties. We heartily wish that they who assume the task of guiding public opinion, North and South, were endowed with a tithe of the author's toleration. Dr. Field believes the Race Problem to be "the gravest that ever touched a nation's life," and he shows that its gravity is yearly increasing. Despite Theodore Parker's prediction that "When slavery is abolished, the African population will decline in the United States," we are confronted with the truth that since the war the blacks have increased at the rate of over a hundred thousand a year; that, as some put it, while the whites have increased, the blacks have swarmed." The facts cited by Dr. Field in this connection will attract the attention of those readers whose mental condition is such as to admit of the weighing of evidence at all; and it is certainly well for us at the North who presume to sit in judgment upon our Southern fellow-citizens to at

tain first to a decent knowledge of the latter's surroundings. As to the evils of negro suffrage, the author expresses himself pretty plainly; but he does not hold that it is only when ignorance is coupled with a black skin that it should be deprived of the ballot. On this point he is explicit: "Universal suffrage is well enough in New England, in the country towns, where there is general intelligence and the people have been trained to voting in the town elections; but to give it to the ignorant creatures that are dumped' like cattle on our shores is the very insanity of democracy." Dr. Field does. not attempt to solve the grave questions upon which he touches. The situation is, however, fairly set forth; and it may be unnecessary to say that such schemes as the wholesale expatriation of the negroes, and the purifying of the ballot by unconstitutional means, meet with small favor. The bulk of the volume is of light texture anecdote, personal experience, etc.; and mention should be made of a graphic description of the battle of Franklin.

THE second volume of Donald G. Mitchell's "English Lands, Letters, and Kings" (Scribner) is, like the first, welcome for its fresh and picturesque presentation of familiar scenes, names, and persons. The first volume extended "From Celt to Tudor "; the second continues the story "From Elizabeth to Anne." Standing on the threshold of the seventeenth century, we are shown James I. "making his shambling way to the throne-beset by spoilsmen,"

while certain vivid touches of characterization show the great change in the national temper, owing to the change of ruler. James's power was "the power of a blister that keeps irritating—and not, like Elizabeth's, the power of a bludgeon that thwacks and makes an end." 66 Englishmen were not as boastful of being Englishmen as in the days the virgin Elizabeth queened it, and shattered the Spanish Armada, and made her will and England's power respected everywhere." Yet withal, "the trail of Elizabethan literary splendor was still all aglow." Though Spenser and Marlowe and Sidney were gone, Raleigh and Francis Bacon, Heywood, Dekker, and Ben Jonson were still living, while Shakespeare was at his best and acting in his own plays at the newly-built Globe Theatre. Mr. Mitchell frankly confesses a shrinking from undertaking to deal with the famous Shakespeare, known so well to all the world, and about whom so much has been written and said; but cannot decline the task, since the great dramatist seems "not so much a personality as some great British stronghold, with outworks and with pennons flying, standing all athwart the Elizabethan valley down which our track leads us." So he gives us one more recital of the ofttold story of Shakespeare's life and literary labors, not one of the least charming, though, like all the rest, forced to draw largely on the imagination for its facts. In the succeeding reigns—the two Charleses, James II., William and Mary, Queen Anne-it is still the writers rather than the sovereigns that in