of the true fire. Miss Doney, like Mrs. Browning, is

apt to be carried away into abstractions and conceits which often jar on the reader. She is the slave of certain epithets—" white" is the moat tyrannical—and the language of erotic poetry is used so continuously on all subjects that the pitch becomes too high and the voice grows harsh. But when all has been said, she has a true lyrical gift, a sense of delicate words, an imagination which has the double power of making common things immense and the immensities homely. And sometimes her feeling loses its incoherence and attains that poignant simplicity which is the goal of poetry. Few of her verses are perfect, for in most some line or phrase jars ; but all have the impress of a remarkable temperament. As an example, not of her best work, but of the kind of emotion which she has made her own, we quote one sonnet:-

• '

Dear! in this unfamiliar hour when yen, By Death disrobed of all your mortal dress, First put on as a garment loveliness, And feel a tireless vigour through and through, I wonder, do you wish me near to view The radiant beauties round you, and confess Within your heart the shadow of distress Because the Angel did not call me too ? My Darling, I, who ever asked that ill,

Though shackling all my joys, might let you be, Am praying that a strange, new want of me,

And eager as my own desire, may thrill Your soul with transient longings, ere Christ fill Your hands with Misses that I cannot see."

If Miss Doney writes with something of an Eastern point of view, Mrs. Naidu, for• all her Indian blood, has the authentic accent of the West. There is nothing of "Laurence Hope's" distraught passion in these charming songs of The Golden Threshold. They are delicate exercises in the lightest of light verse,—folk-songs, fairy-tales, lyrics which embody the moods of a moment. She sings, in her own words, of

"The sword of old battles, the orown of old kings, And happy and simple and sorrowful things,"

but mainly of things simple and happy. In a way she is imitative, not of any special poet, but of good literature in general, for her work is rather the experiment of a cultivated mind than the product of intense feeling. Her versatility is proved by her success in that most difficult of forms, the Court ode, and we could wish that all our Laureates were as skilful in their production. But she is best when she is simplest, as in the following verses of a village song "Honey child, honey child, the world is full of pleasure, Of bridal-songs and cradle-songs and sandal-scented leisure, Your bridal robes are in the loom, silver and saffron glowing, Your bridal cakes are on the hearth: 0 whither are you going ? The bridal-songs and cradle-songs have cadences of sorrow, The laughter of the sun to-day, the wind of death to-morrow. Far sweeter sound the forest-notes when forest streams are

falling;

O mother mine, I cannot stay ; the fairy-folk are calling."

The lady who writes under• the name of "E. Nesbit" is also skilled in her craft, and her latest book, The Rainbow and the Rose, shows much dexterity in versification, and a wider range than is usual in modern lyrics. We like her best in her village monologues, which are full of insight and humour and sound philosophy. But when she pleases she can write also graceful songs, and there is one stately invocation to England

" Shoulders of upland brown laid dark to the sunset's bosom, Living amber of wheat, and copper of new ploughed loam, Down whore the white sheep wander, little gardens in blossom, Roads that wind through the twilight up to the lights of

home.

Lanes that are white with hawthorn, dykes where the sedges shiver,

Hollows where caged winds slumber, moorlands where winds wake free,

Sowing and reaping and gleaning, spring and torrent and river, Are they not more, by worlds, than the whole of the world can be?"

Mr. Neuman's Pro Patria has some good ballads—notably " The Heavenly Lover "—and several meritorious topical verses on incidents in the Boer War•. In one little poem, "The Voice of the Mountains," he reproduces with much charm the manner of the late Mr. F. W. Myers. The next five writers on our list have all a share of talent, but they suffer from a fatal gift of facility. Mrs. Felkin is an adept at light verse in the style, but without the distinction, of Praed, with many neatly turned antitheses and verbal surprises; but her skill

Over the gloom

becomes monotonous, and she lacks the nicer taste which kept Praed from undue sentimentality. Mr. Wheeler's Poems tend always towards the drawing-room ballad, and though here and there we detect signs of a more virile talent, it is all overlaid with an easy emotionalism. The some is true of most of Mr. Grindrod's Studies in Rhyme and Rhythm, but he has also imagination, and when he finds an adequate theme, as in "The Diver's Tale," he writes with power and distinction. With every desire to find merit in Mr. Lloyd Mifflin's " Sonnets," we confess ourselves disappointed. Written on any conceivable subject, they rarely rise above the platitudinous, and at their beet are sonorous without being in any way impressive. The man who can write such a concluding line as

And silence listens, stiller than a stone,"

has much to learn in poetic taste. The slim anonymous volume, Euphrosyne, is very full of echoes and crudities, but one poem, "At the Other Bar," shows a power of imagine. tion and a metrical accomplishment for which the rest scarcely prepare us.

Of very different quality is Mr. Ernest Favene's Voices of the Desert. Here there is little of the versifier's skill, but much of the reality of poetry. The author is no deft purveyor of other men's fancies. In these grim little ballads of the great deserts of Central Australia there is a passion and a realism which are all too rare to-day. They are saved from melodrama by their simplicity, for Mr. Fayette ban lived the life, and his memories are too sharp and poignant to need adornment. " The Madman's Dream of the Golden Mountain" is a hideous and unforgettable nightmare, and "A Bush Tragedy" is a grim study of death in the desert. Save for some slight debt to Lindsay Gordon, he owes nothing to any literary predecease's; but in spite of many metrical faults, there is more of the true fibre of poetry in him than in a host of imitative singers. It is raw, uufashioned stuff, but it is the real thing.

Last on our list comes Mr. Noyes's fairy-tale, The Forest of Wild Thyme. In a pleasant "Apologia" the author seems to hint that it is his last attempt at the simple, unstudied lyric which he has made his own, and that henceforth he will show himself an austerer craftsman. We applaud the decision, but with a slight regret, for his simplicity at its best has a curious charm. The trouble is that there is so much dross mixed with the gold, so many jingling cadences mingled with the music. The new volume shows all the characteristic strength and weakness of Mr. Noyes's temperament. The scheme of the story seems to us scarcely happy, and we cannot convince ourselves that it will be altogether appreciated by children, for every self-respecting child hates sentimentality. But there is much graceful fancy in the description of the wonders seen fa• down in the Forest of Thyme, where spiders become dragons and beetles elephants ; and old catches from nursery rhymes are skilfully interwoven. The following lines are a good instance of the melodious and imaginative verse which comes so trippingly from Mr. Noyes's pen

Then we came through a glittering crystal grub

By a path like a pale moonbeam,

And a broad blue hedge of Forget-me-not.

Over a shimmering stream,

To where, through the deep blue dusk, a gleam

Rose like the soul of the setting sun ; A sunset breaking through the earth, A crimson sea of the poppies of dreams, Deep as the sleep that gave them birth In the night where all earthly dreams are done.

And then, like a pearl-pale porch of the moon,

Faint and sweet as a starlit shrine,

Over the gloom Of the crimson bloom We saw the gates of Ivory shine; And lulled and lured by the lullaby tune Of the cradling airs that drowsily creep From blossom to blossom, and lazily croon Through the heart of the midnight's mystic moon,

We came to the gates of the City of Sleep."

NOVELS.

BARBARA REBELL.*

MB word "novel" has unfortunately lost the exact meaning which it had fifty years ago, and for the sake of accurate

• Barbara Rebell. By Dm Bello.Lowbulce. London, W. libiubmaurb Ns.]