A Quarter of a Century. By H. W. Fricker. (Effingham
Wilson.} —This is precisely the book that a man would wish his enemy to write. Mr. Fricker dedicates his volume of poems to a friend of twenty-five years' standing ; can the latter have known the fatal determination, and not placed his body between his friend and the publisher ? It contains more nonsense than any book of the size that we ever opened, and it is extremely difficult to select a specimen which shall bo bad enough to give an idea of the average badness. Hero is what Europe has done to Africa apropos of the slave trade. She has
"Let Injury walk With swollen lids along the strand, Poise all her chains, and rattling stalk Amid the ruins of a land."
At Toulon we are told,— " Beside the stately man-of-war, With masts that scale Where moons do sail, Up tapering into ether far, Glides like a snake, From thorny brake, The galley, with its crew forcat."
We will leave our author at the sea-side, wondering "If the soul when free Could sail upon the combing swells, That roll, and run, and rock, and be The voices of the deep—its bells."
Who or what are the "combing swells ?"
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