LYRA ELEGANTIA.RIIM.* Tins is a nearly perfect collection of English

poetry of the draw- ing-room, and though we cannot honestly admire that poetry as

Mr. Locker does, we can most honestly admire this volume of Mr. Locker's. There are men in England, and men of no mean criti-

cal power, to whom short polished poems, shining with point, glistening with epigram, bright with lively turns of expression, or rounded, though minute, thoughts are infinitely grateful, taste like good wine, are exciting as sparkling music. We have no quarrel with their taste, any more than with the taste of a man who loves Beranger more than Shelley, who can praise a quick waltz above Beethoven, or deliberatzly prefer the lighter champagnes to the best brand of Chateau Margaux. His is a pure and a high taste, according to his idiosyncracy, and no man has the right to protest that one idiosyncracy is higher than another. If he prefers the violin to the organ, he is preferring an instrument feeble indeed as an exponent of the most solemn thoughts of the greatest com- posers, but with a wider range of expression, and an infinitely deeper hold over the multiform sympathies of the great majority

of mankind. Men who could hardly appreciate Shakespeare, except as dramatist, who would, if they spoke out, contemn Words- worth, and who yield to Tennyson only a half hesitating allegiance, will delight in this volume, and they will be delighting in good things. Mr. Locker, himself a poet of society, has the taste for such poetry of a true epicure, of the man to whom one bite of a good dish is not only as pleasant as a meal, but even pleasanter, but who never mistakes a confectioner's entree' for a dish. He has defined his own self-imposed limits thus :— " In his judgment genuine vers de sociith and vers d'occasion should tO short, elegant, refined, and fanciful, not seldom distinguished by chastened sentiment, and often playful. The tone should not be pitched high; it should be idiomatic, and rather in the conversational key ; the rhythm should be crisp and sparkling, and the rhyme frequent and never forced, while the entire poem should be marked by tasteful moderation, high finish, and completeness ; for, however trivial the subject-matter may be, indeed rather in proportion to its triviality, subordination to the rules of composition and perfection of execution should be strictly enforced."

Would it not be as accurate to say he has tried to include every verse which would 'please a cultivated woman if read to

her in a drawing-room full of other women ?—for if so, scarcely anything in the language nutty, and short, and appetizing, • Lyra Elegantiarum. Selected by F. Locker. London: Ifoxou.

has escaped him, and scarcely anything has pleased his palate which is not thoroughly good. With fine discrimination he has rejected everything which strikes any chord of deeper feel- ing; whether of pleasure, or pride, or suffering, but has dismissed no specimen of pleasant expression, whether its merit be wit, or suddenness of thought, or gentleness of feeling — we can-

not find another phrase—or curiosa felicitas of form. He does not exclude Cowper's "Battle of the Nose and Eyes," an exqui-

site example of purely humoristic verse ; or Herrick's verse on a "Bracelet," which is a mere conceit; or Lovelace on "Inconstancy," which is a melodious joke ; or Lord Dorset's love letter from the sea, which is a string of delicate puns ; or Prior's little- "Address to Nancy," perhaps the most perfect specimen of album verses ever written, except Hood's "I'm Not a Single Man ;" or his translation of "Anima Vagula Blandula," perhaps the lightest good one made—there must be a hundred altogether ;—or Can- plug's "Needy Knife-grinder," sharpest and slightest of political squibs ; or Brough's " Nelly," tenderest and lightest song ever- addressed to a child, yet which stirs fathers as more solemn music cannot ; or Mahoney's "Bells of Shandon," the only nonsense verses which inspire melancholy and mirth together ; or Lord Byron's best drinking Bong, or Blomfield's proposal in verse, or an epigram of Sheridan's ; or Laudor's Horatian verses, half epigram, half feeling,—he excludes nothing that is good and bright, and-.-let us say our own say, and not other people's—just. a little thin. He does not even reject a mere rhymed repartee like this :—

" Lord Erskine, on woman presuming to rail,

Calls a wife a tin canister tied to one's tail ;' And fair Lady Anne, while the subject he carries on, Seems hurt at his Lordship's degrading comparison.

But wherefore degrading ? consider'd aright, A canister's polish'd, and useful, and bright: And should dirt its original purity hide, That's the fault of the puppy to whom it is tied ;"

or a mere pun like this, on Miss Ellen Tree,

"On this Tree if a nightingale settles and sings, The Tree will return her as good as she brings ;"

or Sir John Harrington's eternally quoted epigram,

"Treason doth never prosper—What's the reason? If it doth prosper, none dare call it treason ;"

or a mere rhymed compliment, like this of Matthew Prior,

"With virtue such as yours had Eve been arml, In vain the fruit had blash'd, the serpent charm'd, Nor had our bliss by penitence been bought, Nor had frail Adam fall'n, nor Milton wrote."

Least of all does he reject the true vers de societe, the pointed,. sparkling bit of gilded brass, of which this is perhaps as perfect and as meaningless a specimen as we are likely to find :— " WHAT 1.4 A WOMAN LIKE?

"A woman is like to—but stay—

What a woman is like, who can say ?

There is no living with or without one — Love bites like a fly, Now an ear, now an eye, Buz, buz, always buzzing about one, When she's tender and kind She is like, to my mind (And Fanny was so, I remember), She's like to-0 dear !

She's as good, very near, As a ripe melting peach in September.

If she laugh, and she chat, Play, joke, and all that, And with smiles and good humour she meet me, She's like a rich dish Of venison or fish, That cries from the table, Come, eat me !'

But she'll plague you, and vex you, Distract and perplex you ; False-hearted and ranging, Unsettled and changing, What, then, do you think she is like?

Like a sand? like a rock ?

Like a wheel? like a clock ?

Ay, a clock that is always at strike.

Her head's like the island folks tell on, Which nothing but monkeys can dwell on ; Her heart's like a lemon—go nice She carves for each lover a slice ; In truth she's to me, Like the wind, like the sea, Whose raging will hearken to no man ; Like a mill, like a pill, Like a flail, like a whale, Like an ass, like a glass Whose image is constant to no man ; Like a shower, like a flower, Like a fly, like a pie, Like a pea, like a flea, Like a thief, like—in brief,

She's like nothing on earth—but a woman !"

He despises nothing, so it be good of its own kind, fit for dessert rather than for dinner. Mr. Locker's taste seems to us, who like not vers de socilte as he does, nearly perfect ; we have skimmed his book with deliberate intent to find a poor poem, or one out- side his own definition of his own intention, and have found only one which meets both our requirements. This is excessively poor, strained, and unpoetical, and so far as it touches any chord at all, touches one far too deep for a collection of drawing-room verse:—

" Tim UrAs 31earaons LANE.

"A tree grew in Java, whose pestilent rind A venom distill*d of the deadliest kind ; The Dutch sent their felons its juices to draw, And who return'd safe, pleaded pardon by law.

"Face-muffled, the culprits crept into the vale, Advancing from windward to 'scape the death-gale ; How few the reward of their victory earn'd, For ninety-nine perish'd for one who retarn'd !

"Britannia this Upas-tree bought of Mynheer, Remov'd it through Holland, and planted it here ; 'Tis now a stock plant, of the genus wolf's-bane, And one of them blossoms in Marybone Lane.

"The house that surrounds it stands first in a row, Two doors, at right angles, swing open below ; And the children of misery daily steal in, And the poison they draw we denominate Gin.

"There enter the prude, and the reprobate boy, The mother of grief, and the daughter of joy, The serving-maid slim, and the serving-man stout, They quickly steal in, and they slowly reel out.

"Surcharged with the venom, some walk forth erect, Apparently baffling its deadly effect ; But, sooner or later, the reckoning arrives, And ninety-nine perish for one who survives.

"They cautious advance with slonch'd bonnet and hat, They enter at this door, they go out at that; Some bear off their burthen with riotous glee, But most sink, in sleep at the foot of the tree.

"Tax, Chancellor Van, the Batavian to thwart, This compound of crime, at a guinea a quart ; Let Gin fetch, per bottle, the price of champagne, And hew down the Upas in Marybone Lane."

Let us give a parody which we once heard at a supper table, which is unfortunately in praise of the upas tree, but which is infinitely more like a real vers de sociele than James Smith's production :— " 0 Gin! it is a blessed thing, Beloved from pole to pole,

To Tanqueray the praise be given, Who sent the creamy gin from heaven That slides into my soul."

Collins's "Golden Farmer" is scarcely within the true limit, though the words are jocular, any more than Kingsley's "Merry Brown Hares" would be, at least it is not so now, whatever they were when they were written.

This is, however, almost hypercriticism. The simple truth is that Mr. Locker has rifled the poets of such sweetnesses as they had fit for dessert, until he has scarcely left one to be collected by those who come after him. Many a one known to the student is .of course omitted, as being tainted with the coarseness, which oddly .enough, and yet naturally, was once a marked feature in drawing- room poetry. One such, of Sheridan's, which Mr. Locker would not quite like to read aloud in a drawing-room, has been by acci- dent retained, but of omissions we can, except in Shakespeare, recollect at this moment only one. Surely Southey's lines on love beginning, "They sin who tell us love can die," belong, on any -f air sketch of its design, to this collection, and would honour it ? On the whole, however, this collection will be a pleasure to a whole generation of drawing-room talkers, and remind graver men -of many beauties scattered among our poetry which they have scarcely remembered, perhaps awake in them the perception of -qualities to which they have been blind. It is difficult to us, for -example, to appreciate Praed, but it would be more difficult to End in English lighter, sunnier fun than "The Letter of Advice:"— " If he wears a top-boot in his wooing,

If he comes to you riding a cob, If he talks of his baking or brewing, If he puts up his feet on the hob, If he ever drinks port after dinner, If his brow or his breeding is low,

If he calls himself 'Thompson' or ' Skinner,'—

My own Araminta, say 'No!'

"If be studies the news in the papers While you are preparing the tea, If he talks of the damps or the vapours While moonlight lies soft on the sea, If he's sleepy while you are capricious, If he has not a musical 'Oh!'

If he does not call Werther delicious,— My own Araminta, say 'No!' "If he ever sets foot in the City Among the stockbrokers and Jews,

If he has not a heart full of pity,

If he don't stand six feet in his shoes, If his lips are not redder than roses, If his hands are not whiter than snow,

If he has not the model of noses,—

My own Araminta, say 'No!'

"If he speaks of a tax or a duty, If he does not look grand on his knees, If he's blind to a landscape of beauty, Hills, valleys, rocks, waters, and trees, If he dotes not on desolate towers, If he likes not to hear the blast blow, If he knows not the language of flowers,— My own Araminta, say 'No!'

. . . . . . . . "Don't listen to tales of his bounty, Don't hear what they say of his birth, Don't look at his seat in the county, Don't calculate what he is worth ; But give him a theme to write verse on, And see if he turns out his toe ; If he's only an excellent person,— My own Araminta, say No!" "