Songs of the Woods. With One Hundred Illustrations. (Nelson and
Sons.)—This is a volume of extracts from the poets, touching more or less directly on woodland scenery. One might object that some of the pieces are scarcely appropriate. The "Brook" is not especially a " woodland " brook, but goes by "thirty bills" and "twenty therms ;" and the " Yew " stands in a churchyard ; while " Spring-time " gives us a whole landscape. None are more characteristic or appropriate than the extracts from Keats ; for Keats was a poet who loved to paint the foregrounds,—and woods, we might say, are all foregrounds. Wordsworth, on the other hand, delighte in landscapes. Thomson, of course, sang of real woods ; one passage quoted from him is not quite rightly headed " Spring in the Woods." The lark who
"mounted sings Amid the dawning clouds," •
has nothing to do with woods. Naturalists call him gaud° arvensis. But it is ungracious to criticise a volume which is so prettily illus- trated, and which does not contain anything which, strictly relevant or no, is unworthy of its place.
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