VIGNETTES IN RHYME,

MR. LOCKER has here found a rival, and a formidable one. It is not for the first time in this book that we have admired the grace and skill of Mr. Austin Dobson's verse. Many of these little poems,--which had appeared in various periodicals, the St.

* Vignettes in Rhyme end Vera de Societe! (now Aral collected). By Austin Dobson. London: Seery S. King and Co. Paula especially, Are think,—were familiar to us before we re-read them in this pleasant volume, but moat of them have gained by re-reading, and some of those which we had not read seem better than any of those we had. We were not prepared to find so many fresh, soft, delicate pictures amongst these " Vignettes," though we were quite prepared for the easy banter and social pleasantry (sometimes, we think, a little too full of allusive turns) of the so-called society-verses. Mr. Dobson gives us something more than the tone and manner of cultivated social life, with its vivid ripple of thought and feeling. He can add to this a picture so full of beauty that the mind derives something more from it than a momentary vision of that vivacity of life which mutual liking and mutual jealousy, and tenderness and dullness of heart, and selfishness and unselfishness, and caprice and waywardness, and gaucherie and tact, and hope and melan- choly, and tranquillity and impatience, and all the rest of the qualities which make human society vibrate gently with a thousand undulations, —lend to the scene on which we live and act. With these Mr. Austin Dobson has made himself familiar, and he handles them always with sufficient, though with certainly unequal skill. What we were not prepared for was the beauty of the picture in which he sometimes frames these minute frag- ments of the drama of society, the liquid vistas down which he allows your eye to range before he fixes it on the little tingling human interest of the moment, the tenderness or irony, the mellow calm or the irritating sting, of the phase of society he de- lineates. We were quite prepared for such satirical pieces as " Une Marquise" and "The Love-letter,"—pieces we do not greatly ad- mire, by the way,—and for very much better efforts of the same kind (such, for instance, as the clever lines called Laissez-faire," written apropos of Goethe's amusing account of himself as the Weltkind between the dirty philanthropist Basedow and the sentimental prophet Lavater) ; but we were hardly prepared for the touches of genuine beauty which adorn so many of these little poems, and set the verses of society' in a framework of softer and more imagina- tive loveliness than the refined give-and-take of social intellect and sentiment usually suggest. What lovely bits of poetic feeling, for instance, gleam through the beautiful little poem on " The Sick Man and the Birds "!—

/EGMOTII8.

SPRING,—art thou come, 0 Spring!

I am ton sick for words ; How haat thou heart to sing, 0 Spring! with all thy birds ?

Mamma.

I sing for joy to see again The merry leaves along the lane,

The little bud grown ripe ;

And look, my love upon the bough I

Hark, how she calleth to me now,— " Pipe pipe !"

2EGROTUS.

Ah weary is the sun ; Love is an idle thing; But, Bird, thou restless one, What ails thee, wandering?

Mamma By shore and sea I come and go, To seek I know not what; and lo On no man's eaves I sit But voices bid me rise once more,

To flit again by sea and shore,—

Flit! Flit I JEGROTIJS.

This is Earth's bitter cup: Only to seek, not know.

But then, that strivest up, Why dost thou carol so ?

AmaRDA.

A secret Spirit gifteth me With song, and wing that Meth me,—

A Spirit for whose sake, Striving amain to roach the sky, Still to the old dark earth I cry-

' "Wake I wake!"

IF,os.ores.

My hope hath lost its wing. Thou, that to night dost call, How haat thou heart to sing Thy tears made musical?

Panbowr.

Alas for me 1 a dry desire

Is all my sOng,—a waste of fire

That not fade nor fail;

To me, dim shapes of ancient crime Moan through the windy ways of time, " Wail ! wail ! "

.ZEGROTICS.

Thine is the sick man's song,—

Mournful, in sooth, and fit ; Unrest that cries "How long ! "- And the night answers it.

How fine is that verse which gives the sick man's gloomy inter- pretation of the nightingale's song,—a morbid and a false interpre- tation, no doubt, but still one dramatically fit for the imagination of shattered health and nerves upon the rack. There are few living poets who might not be proud of the lines :— " To me, dim shapes of ancient crime

Moan through the windy ways of time."

Or, again, take this sweet little bit of restful garden-picture, the background on which a delicate little morsel of story is brightly

painted:—

'Tie an old dial, dark with many a stain ; In summer crowned with drifting orchard-bloom, Tricked in the autumn with the yellow rain, And white in winter like a marble tomb; And round about its gray, time-eaten brow Lean letters speak—a worn and shattered row : "I am a Shade : a Shadowe too arts thou: I marke the Time : saye, Gossip, dost thou see ? " Here would the ringdoves linger, head to head; And here the snail a silver course would run, Beating old Time ; and here the peacock spread His gold-green glory, shutting out the sun.

Glimpses of peace like that are just enough to rest the mind from the necessary twitter and badinage of society-verses' pleasant chatter. Mr. Dobson, too, can reach the deepest pathos now and then. The verses headed " Before Sedan" close with two of very high power and beauty. The metre is somewhat hackneyed, and has become so much the conventional metre to express this sort of dumb pain, that we half rebel against it. We determine not to be moved by that almost stereotyped appeal to pity at the close of the first and second stanzas which consists in declaring that you can make no effectual appeal :-

Here in this leafy place, Quiet he lies,

Cold, with his sightless face Turned to the skies ; 'Tis but another dead ; All you can say is said.

Carry his body hence,— Kings must have slaves; Kings climb to eminence Over men's graves: So this man's eye is dim ;— Throw the earth over him.

What was the white you touched, There, at his aide?

Paper his hand had clutched Tight are he died;—

Message or wish, may be ;— Smooth the folds out and see.

Hardly the worst of us Here could have smiled !- Only the tremulous Words of a child ;— Prattle, that has for stops Just a few ruddy drops.

Look. She is sad to miss, Morning and night, His—her dead father's—kiss ; Tries to be bright, Good to mamma, and sweet. That is all. "Marguerite."

Ah, if beside the dead Slumbered the pain ! Ah, if the hearts that bled Slept with the slain ! If the grief died ;—but no ; Death will not have it so.

But notwithstanding the stony-hearted state in which we are left up to the close of the third stanza, we give in completely to the beauty of the last two. In spite of the somewhat ostentatious helplessness of the rhythm to express what it secretly hopes to express, after all, by virtue of the severe simplicity (or is it siniplesse of the style, the real simplicity and beauty of the feeling itself quite take possession of us.

But while drawing attention to the gleams of higher beauty with which Mr. Dobson relieves the lighter banter of his verses, we must not forget what is, after all, of the substance of his book. We don't know whether his lighter humour is ever quite so happy as that displayed in such poems as Mr. Locker's " To a Skull " and "To a Picture of my Grandmother," but it is very bright, and the moods of it are very softly shaded frbm playfulness to tenderness and from ridicule to pity. What can be brighter in its way than " An Idyll in the Conservatory " called "Tu Quoque," and with the motto, " Romprons-nous, on ne romprons-nous pas "?—.

NELLIE.

If I were you, when ladies at the play, sir, Beckon and nod, a melodrama through, I Would not turn abstractedly away, sir, If I were you.

FRANK.

If I were yon, when persons I affected, Wait for three hours to take me down to Kew, I would, at least, pretend I recollected, If I were you!

NELLIB.

If I were you, when ladies are so lavish, Sir, as to keep me every waltz but two, I would not dance with odious Miss M'Tavish, If I were you! Flamm If I were you, who vow you cannot suffer Whiff of the best,—the mildest "honey-dew," I would not dance with smoke-consuming Puffer; If I were you! NELLIE.

If I were you, I would not, sir, be bitter,

Even to write the "Cynical Review; "—

FRANK.

No. I should doubtless find flirtation fitter, If I were you! NELLIE.

Really ! You would? Why, Frank, you're quite delightful,—

Hot as Othello, and as black of hue ;

Borrow my fan. I would not look so frightful,

If I were you!

FRANK.

"It is the cause." I mean your chaperon is

Bringing some well-curled juvenile. Adieu!

I shall retire. I'd spare that poor Adonis, If I were you! NELLIE.

Go, if you will. At once And by express, sir ! iThere shall it be? To China—or Peru?

Go. I should leave inquirers my address, sir, If I were you I

FRANK.

No,—I remain. To stay and fight a duel

Seems, on the whole, the proper thing to do- Ah, you are strong,—I would not then be cruel, If I were you! NELLIE.

One does not like one's feelings to be doubted,—,

FRANK.

One does not like one's friends to misconstrue,— NELLIE.

If I confess that I a wee-bit pouted ?— FRANK.

I should admit that I was pique, too.

NELLIE.

Ask me to dance. I'd say no more about it, If I were you [Waltz—Exeunt-7

But we enjoy still more the picturesque humour of "A Garden Idyll," in which the grotesque boyish memories are so pleasantly blended with a delicious picture,—

" With birds that gossip in the tune,

And windy bough-swing in the metre."

And poems like " The Drama of the Doctor's Window " show the• humour of the author at its best, touched with a tenderness which. is never absent from his most effective productions. Indeed, his- style has reminded us many times,—and we can hardly give higher praise,—of the exquisite levity and still more exquisite pathos of one of Mr. Tennyson's finest and easiest poems, " Will Waterproof's Lyrical Monologue." We do not like Mr. Dobson nearly so well when he puts on an antique gallantry of phrase in the Rossettiish poems which close the volume. It seems to use that he is always beat and tenderest when he is most easy. " An Unfinished Song," for instance, is far more beautifu) and pathetic than the verses about Angiola.' And again, we don't think Mr. Dobson succeeds in pure satire. " The Book- worm " and " Une Marquise " are both savage, without being. forcible. They strain after an effect that seems to be not within Mr. Dobson's literary reach. Tenderness when it is playful an playfulness when it is tender are both perfectly given in this charming little book, which contains also an exquisite sense of natural beauty. In satiric invective we do not think that Mr_ AustinDobson excels.