—Indian Lyrics. By W. Trego Webb. (Thacker, Spink, and Co.,
Calcutta.)—Mr. Webb begins his volume with between thirty and forty sonnets, in which he describes various characters in Indian life, both native and European. The metre chosen is surely curiously inappropriate. Naturally these descriptions have sometimes touches that are comic, whether intended to be RO or not ; and whoever before saw a comic sonnet ? Here is one, neither better nor worse than its fellows :—
" TRE SURGEON-MAJOR.
Tower'd cities please us.'—lantrott.) Like as a rope to those who clutch at straws, Or like to sheltering eaves when showers distil I deem the Di ctor, mid the frequent ill That Etiglish flesh is heir to, under laws Climatic such as these. The Rejah draws And Zemin& r upon his hea ing skill, Their Nr.tive email spent, though of the bill Too oft oblivious are they, without cause. Yet large his gains when Fortune's friendly care To cities poets him : wives and children pale Rich fees supply, which oft a neighbouring jail Enhances ; while for him the wedded pair Do from their income tithe an annual share ; Besides the hospitals for folk that ad."
When Hr. Webb is professedly comic he is certainly happier, as in - the tripping stanzas of the "Ode to a Mosquito," or in "The Ballad of Night Punkahs," and " The Dark Bungalow," which has one or two stanzas that Mr. Calverley might have written, as e.g.,— " The iron forks of elder time ;
For bread, ehupatties fist and round ; A tablecloth wi h years embrowned, Sauces and pickles of the prime."
—Lays o' flame an' Co,intry, by Alexander Logan (Oliphant and Co., Edinburgh), is a volume of respectable verse in the Scottish dialect.—From Year to Year, by E. II. Bickersteth, M.A. (Sampson Low and Co.), consists of "Poems and Hymns for all the Sundays and Holy Days of the Church." With this may be mentioned' The Seven Words of the Cross, and other Hymns, by "S. M. C." (Griffith and Farren).--Conrad Walleurod (Richardson and Son, London and Derby), is a translation, by Michael IL Dziewicki, from the Polish of Adam Mitskievitch, a patriotic poem actually dealing with the days when the Teutonic Order was defeated in its invasion of Lithuania, but intended to have a reference to the affairs of the day. The Wallenrod of the poem is a Lithuanian who assumes the name of the real man, and leads the Knights to a defeat which finally crushes them. The poem which recounts his achievements is, for more than one reason, worthy of the labour which has been spent in making it accessible to English readers.
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