Porrar.—The Three Fountains with other Verses. By the Author of

"The Afterglow." (Longmans.)—The author calls his principal poem a "leery epic." It is written with some power, especially power of description, but there is scarcely sufficient mastery of versification. The occurrence of words obviously introduced for the sake of the rhyme is a frequent cause of offence. But the greatest blemish is the humor- ous element, the writer continually mistaking the hideous for the grotesque. The episode of the dragonness, of whom we are told that "her nose was vivid green, her bashful eyes were scarlet," is an in- stance in point. On the whole, we prefer the shorter poems. Here is a pretty little song :—

Citron-shaded by the fountain,

Weeping, weeping, sits Lill; For Yacoob is on the mountain Which o'erhangs the purple sea ; And there's war upon the mountain,

All above the purple sea.

" Every sound suggests the battle,

As the land wind sinks and swells, Though 'tie but an infant's rattle, And the tinkling of the bells ;

Hush ! 0 nurse, oh hush the rattle, And the tinkling of the bells.'

"Yet the silence is depressing,-

'Tis the silence of the dead; And she clasps her babe, caressing

Glowing cheek and golden head. ,Ah! that I were now caressing

His dear cheek and golden head!

" Yet though my dear love be missing, Here I hold his counter-part !' 'Mid her weeping and her kissing, A swift footstep makes her start ; Oh the weeping and the kissing, As he clasps her to his heart !"

—Sleep Scenes, or Dreams of a Laudanum-Drinker. (Simpkin, Mar- shall, and Co.) —These are fairly written verses, but there is nothing very wonderful about them, nothing like the dreams which De Quincey describes as having come to him after laudanum. The strangest thing about them is the frenzied way in which they speak of woman. The author is more misogynist than Euripides. He bursts out:—

"And why, Disposer of the Universe,

Heat thou within so lovely a disguise Hidden such misery and such deceit 2" And again,—

" It were well

The Serpent spoke to woman, for he knew Most like a serpent is a woman's heart!"

To the general reader he addresses this polite invitation to share his visions :—

LISTS of Overland Trunks, Ladies Travelling Boxes, Portmanteaus, On the whole, we would scarcely advise the reader to accept it. The I Leather Bags, Cabin Furniture, &c., will be forwarded on application to THRESHER and GLENNY, Outfitters, next door to Somerset House, Strand, visions are not worth listening to, much less grovelling for.—Seven ' London.

"Like an inferior beast whom I despise, Grovel and listen."

Years' Writing for Seven Days' Reading, by William Alfred Gibbs (Meson), has reached a second edition. It is a sermon addressed to

-Maidens fair

Who stand in dangerous dear relationship To stripling cousins growing Into men,"

and enforces the doctrine that cousins ought not to marry ; a subject on which, doubtless, much may be said, but which is more suitable for prose than verse.---The Creation, Fall of Man, and other Poems. (Ben- nett.)—This is a volume containing some fair verses, which appear, however, to less advantage than they might, because they are so ob- viously unequal to their subjects.--We cannot say so much for Hymns on the Epistles, by R. D. Harris. (Phillipson.) It is impossible to ba tolerant when we see such grand words put into rhymes that are little if at all better than doggerel.---H. E. R., who writes and publishes Freaks, Follies, Fancies, and Fashions, may be sure that he will not mend any of the social wrongs which move him to wrath by writing versos about them which are always incoherent, and sometimes, we feel constrained to say, indecent. —The Golden Fleece, by Il Errante (True- love), is apparently meant for an imitation of Don Juan. Happily it is almost unintelligible.--A. little volume, Iona, by Wade Robinson (Moffat), shows considerable promise. On the sonnets, indeed, of which the volume mainly consists, we cannot bestow very high praise. Diffi- culties are attractive to the young, and the sonnet is, therefore, a favourite model. And it has its advantages, this perhaps above all, that it is a great help to compression ; but it requires more skill than an un- practised writer can command. Here is a sonnet that has a thought in it and some power of language, but offends because the mechanical difficulties are not fully overcome : — " ON Law.

" God in the gray beginning did ordain His laws His servants. Each an ancient thing, Site in his own domain a vassal king, And reigns within the universal reign.

Here is the power that cares, the powers that kills ; No empty promises, no feeble slips, No blowing-out of doom thro' thunder lips, To spend its terrors moaning in the hills.

Here is the rule which knows not haste or pause,

Pity or bribe, nor sways with doubts and fears ;

Here is the vast machinery of the years ; And ho who madly breaks the eternal laws, Not them breaks, dreadful with wide-flashing steels, But breaks himself among the slow resistless wheels."

We prefer, on the whole, the other poems. We give two stanzas from the "Foreign Grave :"—

" Small strip of unremembered mould,

No tears bedew its lonely bound; It folds away in alien ground What we again shall never fold. And when we bow to meet the call From hollow glooms, it will not be To stretch our quiet bones with thee— The world between us, we shall fall "And Bleep: unless thro' wind or bird Or other chance of chanceful fate Some atoms of our ashes met, With all the kindred in them stirred, Shall heave, in leaf or blossom moved,

On sighings of a summer day,

Aad dream of summers far away, And us together, 0 Beloved !"

" The Cross on the Deck," which we would gladly quote, is another fine thing.