Page:Scottishartrevie01unse.djvu/62

48 In the case of Rossetti, the origin of the poet, and the peculiar bent of his genius, have determined that the form should be chiefly based on Italian models, which, be it remembered, were also those of the Elizabethan writers. Characterised alike by intellectual power, passionate fervour, and spiritual exaltation, taking an expression in which the art quality is of the first order, his poems — unique in the age in which they liave appeared — may be taken as the first-fruits of that New Renascence of to-day which finds voice in the first of the sonnets on Old and New Art.

'Give honour unto Luke Evangelist; For he it was (the aged legends say) Who first taught Art to fold her hands and pray. Scarcely at once she dared to rend the mist Of devious symbols ; but soon having wist How sky-breadth and field-silence and this day Are symbols also in some deeper way, She looked through these to God, and was God's priest. ' And if, past noon, her toil began to irk And she sought talismans, and turned in vain To soulless self-reflections of man's skill, — Yet now, in this the twilight, she might still Kneel in the latter grass to pray again. Ere the night cometh, and she may not work.' But another view of the prospects of literature has been taken. ' We have passed,' says Mr. Leslie Stephen, ' from a land flowing with milk and honey into a comparative desert.' No authority could be more worthy of our acknowledgment than his. Yet it must be remembered that our literature is to a large extent that of a transition period. Men liave drifted away from the old moorings, and liave failed to find new. The leading minds of the age seem to hear the ' melancholy, long, withdrawing roar of the once full sea of faith ' retreating to the breath

' Of the night wind, down the vast edges drear, And naked shingles of the world.' But there are not awanting signs that we are about to witness the flow of a deeper, fuller tide of faitli than we have yet seen. If that be so, there will be another and a richer literature than any the past of our liistory has yet given us. All great literatures have been the outcome of ages of belief. In such ages only is life felt to be a divine thing, latent with untold possibilities, and of such a sense of life literature is the flower and fruit. William Martin.

A Book of Verses. By William Ernest Henley. London : David Nutl. To read poetry as a duty, and review it as a task, is neither fair to the poet nor to the reviewer. So when A Book of Verses by William Ernest Henley was placed in our hands, almost on the eve of our going to press, it was intended to hold over the hook for review in a later number. But a certain charm of freshness and simplicity led us on to perusal, and made a re.iding, which might otherwise have proved a task, become in this case a delight. And so it is with pleasure we now set down the impression formed on a first reading. There is about some of these 'Verses' the higher element of true poetry. The book begins with ' In Hospital, Rhymes and Rhythms.' Here is a 'rhyme' entitled 'Before': — ' Behold me waiting — waiting for the knife. A little while, and at a leap I storm The thick, sweet mystery of chloroform. The drunken dark, the little death-in-life. The gods are good to me : I have no wife,' No innocent child, to think of as I near The fateful minute ; nothing ail-too dear Unmans me for my bout of passive strife. Yet am I tremulous and a trifle sick, And, face to face with chance, I shrink a little : My hopes are strong, my will is something weak. Here comes the basket ? Thank you. I am ready. But, gentlemen my porters, life is brittle : You carry Ccesar and his fortunes — steady I ' There are some exquisite touches of nature throughout, such as the following : — ' White fleets of cloud. Argosies heavy with fruitfulness. Sail the blue peacefully. Green flame the hedgerows. Blackbirds are bugling, and white in wet winds Sway the tall poplars. Pageants of colour and fragrance Pass the sweet meadows, and viewless Walks the mild spirit of May, Visibly blessing the world.' There is a minute, loving observation about these lines that is dis- tinctively personal ; and, because the feeling expressed in them is sincere, it cannot fail to appeal to the reader. This quality of sincerity is essential to poetry. It is no reproach to Mr. Henley that some of his passages remind us of Tennyson, not in the sense of being mere imitations, but because the poet has experienced moods akin to those of the Laureate, and expressed them for himself. The sonnets ' In Fisheirow ' and ' In the Dials,' dealing as they do with human subjects, are notable for the same sincerity of feeling taking here a different direction. The feature of the book is its being the work of a living man, and not the mere skilful exercises of a versifier. It is tastefully printed and bound. Pictures at Play. By Two Art Critics. London : Longmans, Green, & Co. Since Mr. Whistler, some years ago, introduced into this country the exhilarating sport of critic-scalping, at which he is such an adept, the lines of the critics have not fallen in pleasant places. They have been called in question, made to give an account of themselves, in a ^ay that has tended to exercise a wholesome discipline, and even to be a terror to the evildoers among them. In this connection it is satisfactory to find two writers of acknowledged ability — it is an open secret that they are Mr. W. E. Henley and Mr. Andrew Lang — following suit by cleverly satirising the minnows among the tritons of criticism in the piquant little volume before us. As a skit at those ready writers who are a pest to all serious workers, it performs good service to Art, showing up, as it does, the thin society patter, superfluous knowledge of things in general, and ignorance of the thing in hand which have so long been the stock-in-trade of the average art-critic. As a specimen of the caustic style in which the little book is written, here is a remark, put into the mouth of ' One of the Lady Portraits,' which hits off the whole situation : — ' Men are idiots, of course ; and art-critics are (if I may so express myself), a kind of men.' Eiiinliiirgh : T. and A. Coiistaili, Printers to Her Majesty.