Page:The Annual Register 1899.djvu/502

 78 LITEKATUBE. [1899.

Paolo and Frano es oa (Lane), was received by the critics with a chorus of approbation. The plot is founded strictly on Dante, and the most noticeable feature of this first attempt by a young writer in poetic drama is that he manages to instil the true note of tragedy into a style classically severe and simple. The play was written avowedly for the stage, and may be regarded as an honest attempt to revive the literary drama. Its merit lies not so much in its dramatic construction as a whole, as in the distinction which almost always marks its style, and in two or three finely conceived situations.

Two other poets who are likely to claim more than a passing interest have published new work. Mr. W. B. Yeats cultivates a poetic field of his own. He is the exponent of Celtic thought, mystery and legend. He issued in the spring a volume called The Wind among the RoecU (Elkin Mathews), and, a little later, a volume called Poems (Unwin), containing, as he said in his preface, all of his published poetry which he cares to preserve. It contains melodious verse, even when the thought is vague and shadowy, and revives the mystical regretful dreams of the old Irish folklore. The Poetloal 'Works of Robert Bridges (Smith, Elder) have been published, and in them the poet inserted some new poems of much beauty.

Belles Lettres.

In the way of imaginative prose literature, apart from fiction, there is, for 1899, nothing to report. The periodical press now-a-days absorbs the energies of those whose gifts lie in this direction, and even critical essays are seldom given to the world for the first time in book form. The only volumes which come under this head, therefore, consist of re- printed and collected articles. Of these there have been a good many of interest, but only two which, from the standing of their writers and their own interest, demand a mention. One is Mr. Austin Dobson's A Paladin of Philanthropy and Other Papers (Chatto & Windus), con- taining essays ranging over a large variety of subjects, full of eighteenth century lore, conveyed in the writer's elegant and scholarly style. The subject of the essay which gives the book its title is the General Oglethorpe who founded Georgia, and who figures in Boswell's "John- son." The other collection is Mr. Frederic Harrison's Tennyson, Rnskin, Mill and Other XJterary Estimates (Macmillan). Our de- scription of this book as a volume of reprinted papers must have one important qualification, for it contains an original study of Tennyson which had not previously been published, and in which Mr. Harrison challenged discussion on the subject of Tennyson's martial and patriotic verse. In this he contends that the late Laureate often produced " not poetry but journalism."

The library of literary histories which the past few years have produced has received more additions. There has recently been much effort to kindle public interest in the old literature of Ireland. As a result of this movement, we have Dr. Douglas Hyde's A Uterary History of Ireland (Unwin). The author does not include in hi6 survey the later Anglo-Irish writers who have added so many distin- guished names to the record of English literature. Apart from them