Murmurings. By Edmund Falconer. (Tinsley Brothers.)—It would he unkind to
say anything of the politics of the two poems which fill thin volume, for the author himself apologizes for his injustice. But it is much to be regretted that Mr. Falconer's taste has not improved since 1845 as much as his judgment. We never much believed in Horace's maxim about keeping a poem, and this book bears us out. Mr. Falconer has kept it twenty years and published it after all. Here is a specimen of the versification and style taken quite at random :— " His voice now failed, his maniac strength gave way, He reeled and fell, and silent prostrate lay.
Signed by the King, the serfs uplift the seer, But, death-enfranchised, what has he to fear ?"
Indeed Mr. Falconer seems to hold that to use a substantive as if it were a verb is poetry. Every page contains some such phrase,— "Whose crime shall penance long her mother earth,"—"Justice terrored in coercive laws,"—" Struggling to knife the canker from her heart.' When to poetry philosophy is added, the result is simply incomprehen- sible. If any one can explain the last twenty lines of "Man's Mission' it will be very creditable to him.
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