TWO VOLUMES OF SATIRICAL VERSE.*

A READER who can reconcile himself to the fact that satire does not and cannot pretend to be just, will find a vast amount of enjoyment in reading the political ballads to which, from the place of their first publication, Mr. Traill has given the name of Saturday Songs. The enjoyment, we must confess,

is likely to be keener and less alloyed with disagreeable feelings, if he is of the Unionist way of thinking, than if he belongs to the Home-rule camp. One has to be very remote from the subject, if the literary pleasure to be got from good work is not to be diminished by the belief that the writer

is on the wrong side. The fun of the Clouds can be enjoyed without a drawback, in spite of the conviction that Aria- tophanes is most unjustly confounding Socrates with his enemies the Sophists ; and it is possible to laugh heartily over the Frogs, and yet believe that Euripides was a great moralist and a fine poet. But when it comes to persons and things so

near us as Mr. Gladstone and the Home-rule Question, such detachment of mind is more difficult of attainment. Yet the finish of much of this verse is so exquisite, the fun, to our mind, so irresistible, that it must find favour, we should think, even where it jars very sharply on the reader's political convic- tion. Mr. Traill has a ballad, for instance, on Mr. Gladstone's change of attitude on the Channel Tunnel question. The occasion was irresistibly attractive, for though Mr. Gladstone may always have approved the project, his Government dis- allowed it. His defence is a good one : that on the former occasion he was acting in his corporate capacity as the member of a Cabinet, and on the latter expressing his personal opinion ; but the satirist cannot take—and we must excuse him for not taking—any account of this or any other defence. It is his function to put the contrast of the two lines of action in the broadest way, as it is the reader's business to correct, to the best of his knowledge, the mental impression. Meanwhile the fun is undeniable. " Bauld Watkin" asks the help of "Hawarden Willie," but doubts what he will say to the " Tory crowd," who will bid him remember the vote that he " gied " "In the Eighty-five and the Eighty-four." "Hawarden Willie " is very contemptuous :— " Now hand ye your clack quo' Hawarden Willie,

'Now haud ye your clack, Sir Edward,' he cried ; "Tis little, I trow, is the good ye ha' got

Of the days and the years ye' ha' sat by my side.

O think ye a vote is a collar of airn, Or a fetter of steel about my wrist ? 0 think ye a word is a pebble-stane That I canna swallow it when I list ?"

So he goes to the Parliament House, and he makes a speech :- " And he talked till the Parliament House was hung With the saft grey mirk of a mental fog ; And it 's 0 ! but the clapper of Willie's tongue Wad talk off the hind, hind leg of a dog.'

That exquisitely unreasonable repetition of "hind, hind leg" is very good. It seems to snit the supposed character of the rhetoric so well.

Good things, which are without doubt very piquantly flavoured, whether we like the flavour or not, abound in Mr.

Train's book, and the only difficulty is to make a choice. Colonel Blunt's nazi complaint, in " The Contest for Barley-

shire," is irresistible. The Colonel finds himself hard pressed by his opponent, Mr. "Tennent Wright " (as happy a name, in its way, as Anthony Trollope's famous " Dr. Philgrave "), and instructs his steward to offer very liberal terms to his tenants. The Election Judge unseats and very nearly schedules him :-

"The Colonel stared a moment mute, then cried in wonder, Eh ? What ! guilty—practices corrupt ? Look here, my lord, I say, I only paid the farmers down what Mr. Tennent Wright Had promis'd them in six months' time if he should win the fight.'

The learned judge maintained his frown, although there seemed to slip The faintest flicker of a smile across his rigid lip :

You are a simple soldier, sir, or you would hardly miss

The fallacy that vitiates comparisons like this'

• (1.) Saturday Sony.. By H. 1) Trail]. London: W. H. Allen and Co. 1890.- ('2.1 Departmental Ditties, and other Verses. By Eudyard Kipling. Calcutta: Thacker, Spink, and Co. London : Thacker and Co. Well, I shall always miss it,' said the Colonel, while I live. I may not bribe these men, my lord, with what's my own to give, While those confounded Gladatonites, as far as I can see, May bribe them, every mother's son, with what belongs to me !"

Scarcely less good is the Irish patriot's explanation of the substitution of a conversazione for a dinner when Mr. Morley and Lord Ripon visited Ireland in 1888. Of course it was not to avoid the loyal toasts :—

" I'm unable to make out how the story got about ;

Give a dinner ? How unlikely ! how absurd ! Though my feelings I would smother, may I never eat another If a soul in Dublin ever said the word.

But when Tim Maloney asked if my brains I hadn't tasked How to give our hospitality its fling, Then said I to Tim Maloney, Hold a conversazione,' And said Tim to me, Bedad ! the very thing.'

Both the jaynius of the race and the spirit of the place Such a function better suits, we all agree, And no patriot of desert '11 prefer champagne and turtle To a muffin and a simple cup of tea. Yes, that that was all that passed on the subject, first and last, That no dinner was proposed of any sort, And that, save prefixed by 'buttered,' the word 'toast' was never uttered, I would readily make oath in any court."

What a happy touch it is, in "To ' Friendlies' about to Furnish," when the departing British soldier distributes various useful articles to the " friendly " natives whom he is leaving to the vengeance of the Mandi :— " You also would I fain console,

0 too desponding fellah,

With this well-seasoned wooden bowl And Japanese umbrella ; And bid you these blue goggles take— I wish them rosy for your sake."

The last line is perfect.

Perhaps we may conclude our notice of Mr. Traill's poemet by quoting his advice to an eminent poet who has turned politician, not, we think, to the advantage of mankind :— " Were it not better that ye bare him hence, Muses, to that fair land where once he dwelt, And, with those waters at whose brink he knelt (Ere faction's poison drugged the poet-sense) Bathed the unhappy eyes too prone to melt,

And see, through tears, man's woes as men's offence ?'

Take him from things he knoweth not the hang of, Relume his fancy and snuff out his views,' And in the real Paradise he sang of Bid him forget the shadow he pursues."

An author who has reached a " fourth edition " does not need the encouragement, and will hardly heed the advice, of a critic.. Mr. Kipling has been making a marked advance in the literary quality of his work ; and these verses, if not exactly unworthy of him, do not show him at his best. There are some things,. especially the " society " verses, as they may be called, which, we venture to say, he will not be proud of having written in years to come. A cynical, bitter tone is one of the weaknesses of youth which the broader and more liberal views of maturer life may be trusted to correct. A reader of Mr. Kipling who knew nothing of his subject from other sources, might be disposed to conclude that the whole fabric of Anglo-Indian life, political and social, is a sham. If it is, " miracle " is not a half-strong enough word to express the wonder of its. duration. But we do not suppose for a moment that Mr. Kipling thinks so himself. He touches a truer note when, in what we think to be the finest thing in the volume, he expresses the immovable patience with which the " dim common popu- lations" of the great peninsula watch the changes of history. It is not the usual tone of a " Jubilee " poem, but it is worth

listening to:-

" By the well, where the bullocks go Silent and blind and slow— By the field, where the young corn dies In the face of the sultry skies, They have heard, as the dull Earth hears The voice of the wind of an hour, The sound of the Great Queen's voice

My God hath given me years, Hath granted dominion and power : And I bid you, 0 Land, rejoice.'

And the Ploughman settles the share More deep in the grudging clod; For he saith The wheat is my care,. And the rest is the will of God.

He sent the Mahratta spear As He sendeth the rain, And the 317,eck, in the fated year,

Broke the spear in twain,

And was broken in turn. Who knows How our Lords make strife ?

It is good that the young wheat grows, For the bread is life.'

Then, far and near, as the twilight drew, Hissed up to the scornful dark Great serpents, blazing, of red and blue, That rose and faded, and rose anew That the Land might wonder and mark. To-day is a day of days,' they said, Make merry, 0 People, all !' And the Ploughman listened and bowed his head To-day and to-morrow God's will,' he said, As he trimmed the lamps on the wall."