The Appendices on wrong readings and variations, aud on the Greek text, are the result of immense and conscientious toil, and throughout the book the reader will meet with incidental remarks of great value, as, for instance, those upon the Apocrypha in pp. 143-145. Dr. Scrivener has rendered good service by reprinting with notes the comparatively little known but singularly bright and learned preface of "The Translators to the Reader," which is attributed to Dr. Miles Smith, subsequently Bishop of Gloucester, and which follows the Dedication in all the principal editions of the Authorized Version. We may heartily thank Dr. Scrivener for his book, and congratulate him on the worthy completion of a task of which Dr. Blayney and others in the eighteenth century much underrated the difficulty, but "which, being intimately concerned with our best and highest interests, demands to be brought as near to perfection as human infirmity will allow." II.-POETRY. FERISHTAH* is a Persian sage, teaching by parables and the interpretation of parables. The book about him has twelve sections, in blank verse, each devoted to a separate "fancy." There are lyrical interludes, and a prologue and epilogue in rhyme. The blank verse portion of the book-that is, the part which is properly called Ferishtah's fancies-is reflective, didactic and argumentative. It would be wrong to call it sermonizing, because the sermons that resemble it probably do not exist in any large number. It is, however, poetry of the sort that comes nearest to the style of prose argument-an Essay on Man. It will not be one of the best loved of Mr. Browning's books, but it will be better understood than many of them. The discussions do not require much special preliminary training in order to understand what they are about. They are for the most part plain and straightforward, and concerned with matters about which most people have opinions, and many have "views." Ferishtah is not a heartbreaking enigmahe is a humaner sage than Jochanan Hakkadosh. The commentator of the future will find matter enough to give him exercise in "Ferishtah's Fancies," but the difficulties are accidental. Perhaps the Hebrew quotations (pp. 12, 75) were introduced just as a sop to the commentator, to keep up his interest in writing that might be otherwise too easily understood. The teaching of Ferishtah is like that of many of Mr. Browning's poems. The fourth parable repeats one of the morals of "Sordello" -that it is well for man to be no more than man-not " thrusting in time eternity's concern"-not pretending to be God. Those men who are resigned to other people's misfortunes in the best of all possible worlds, those who are too well educated to say their prayers-having rare consideration for the purposes of the universe which they would not like to interfere with by expressing any particular wish of their own-these men are not really wise or admirable * "Ferishtah's Fancies." By R. Browning. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1884. "No, be man and nothing more- The lyric that follows repeats the idea in its own way: Sense to take and hold and keep them! Mine at least has never tried." The nine poems of the "Midsummer's Holiday"* have to stand a dangerous ordeal of comparison with all the other poems in which Mr. Swinburne has written about the air and the sea-such passages as the epilogue to "Songs before Sunrise," the description of Tristram's swimming, and "Ex voto," in the second series of "Poems and Ballads." But whatever the comparison may say is of little importance beside the fact that here are new poems for this year, dealing with subjects that never become tiresome. The poet's exhilaration in the sea and air is not content with one or two songs of praise. The world is new every morning, and asks for new praises continually. The Midsummer Holiday poems are not mechanical variations on old themes. Their inspiration is natural and original, and each poem has a distinct thought of its own, which might be put into prose-if that would do it any good. One of the best of the poems is that called "The Gunboat"-a poem full of exultation in the life of the sea, and, together with that, of a thought that keeps the exultation from being momentary and transient-the thought that no flash of life is any the less living because it passes away, that it is well for the soul to be free, to believe in life more than in the extinction of life: "Spray of song that springs in April, light of love that laughs through May, Keeps a surer life than these that seem to pass like fire away. In the souls they live which are but all the brighter that they were; In the hearts that kindle, thinking what delight of old was there. Wind that shapes and lifts and shifts them bids perpetual memory play "Dawn is cold upon the waters where we drink of dawn to-day; Wide from wave to wave rekindling in rebound through radiant air "A Midsummer Holiday and other Poems." By A. C. Swinburne. London : Chatto & Windus. 1884. "Silence quells not music, darkness takes not sunlight in her snare; 66 Shall not joys endure that perish? Yea, with dawn though night say nay: Light that leaps and runs and revels through the springing flames of spray. Friend, were life no more than this is, well would yet the living fare. All aflower and all afire and all flung heavenward, who shall say Such a flash of life were worthless? This is worth a world of careLight that leaps and runs and revels through the springing flames of spray." After the "Midsummer's Holiday" come a number of poems in different styles on favourite subjects-Victor Hugo, Mazzini, children. There are some memorial sonnets, and some sonnets of indignation against the people who can't hold their tongues about the private life of dead great men. The volume contains a number of political poems which will not be universally interesting. One of them, "A Word for the Country," borrows part of the old form of verse taken by Burns from the "Cherrie and the Slae" of Alexander Montgomery, and the experiment has certainly succeeded; it is a good metre tc express anger in-it does something to save the anger from appearing ludicrous. The drama of "Becket"* is not a chronicle play, it does not attempt to present in succession the different scenes of Becket's contest with Henry II. The action of the play is decided only in part by such public events as Becket's change of mind on becoming Archbishop of Canterbury. It is the Queen's jealousy of Rosamund that is the chief cause of the complication. Becket and the King, in this drama, are not hopelessly estranged from one another. Becket had, while still Chancellor, accepted the duty of saving Rosamund from the Queen, and, in spite of Iris new relations to the King, he continues to recognise his obligation. In act iv. he comes in, in time to stay the hand of Eleanor, and takes Rosamund to Godstone nunnery, out of the Queen's power. The Queen, in act v., misrepresents this to Henry as a piece of Becket's insubordination, an assertion of the authority of the Church; and it is in this way that Harry's exclamation of anger is provoked, and accepted by the four knights as a commission to murder the Archbishop. The succession of incidents is managed in a way that keeps the attention. It may be that what is gained in incident is lost in respect of the characters. It is open to question whether Becket's character does not lose something by losing its singleness of aim and consenting to interfere in the fortunes of Rosamund. But then the play is not a monologue for Becket, and Rosamund's regard for Becket is one of the beauties of the play. The fine scene between Rosamund and Henry (act ii. scene 1), at the beginning and end of which she begs him to be reconciled with Becket, is more than an idyllic love, just by means of this regard. Last year there was another drama on the subject of Rosamund, in the volume of which a second edition is now published.† There is not much history in "Fair Rosamund," except the quarrel of Richard with the young King and his friend, Bertram de Born. It is a drama of two kinds of love, shown in the case of Rosamund and her fostersister Margery. Both kinds bring ruin, but the love of Rosamund and the King is above all need of repentance. The poem is not meant as a pathetic story; it is a lesson in humanity and will bear studying. "Becket." By Lord Tennyson. London: Macmillan & Co. 1884. +"Callirhoë. Fair Rosamund." By Michael Field. London: George Bell & Sons; Clifton: J. Baker & Son. "Callirhoë," the play that precedes "Fair Rosamund," is much less impressive-it is more diffuse and more artificial. The oracle that demands a human sacrifice is a clumsy piece of machinery, and does not produce the amount of terror that might be expected from its portentous solemnity. The reader of "Callirhoë" is perplexed, too, by the number of characters who claim his attention for a moment, only to disappear a moment after in the plague. There are a great many fine passages in the poem-especially the scene in which Machaon, the physician, explains things to the Faun. Mr. Woolner's latest poem is a history of the life of Silenus,* which gives a new interpretation of some old pieces of mythology. Silenus, the drunken Demigod, broad and deep and slumber-loving, full of all knowledge and prophecy, is a character worth consideration. This poem imagines him first of all in the days of his youth, when he was fair and strong, the devoted follower of Dionysus in the Indian conquest, the beloved of Syrinx, the nymph. Syrinx was pursued by Pan, and rescued from him by Artemis. "Great Artemis, loving the forest nymph Thus happily died fair Syrinx; in the flow Of pleasant shade that gave her beauty birth." Silenus, when he came back from India, found no Syrinx; only Pan sitting piping among the reeds. Pan was pursued and cursed by Silenus with the curse of continually baffled desire. Pan is the god of this world, the lord of vanity and fictitious good-the deceiver. It is in this part of the poem that there is perhaps an excess of moral over fable. It might be doubted whether it is right for a mythological poem to let its gods give up their definite visible shape, and turn into tendencies, ideas, generalities, such the modern world reverences. In the representation of the hero Silenus, there is no such allegorizing; though, doubtless, Silenus is meant by the poet to be taken as a type of character, an ideal figure. His life after the disappearance of Syrinx divides itself and contradicts itself. He becomes "a great wine-skin gurgling laughter noise." But he keeps his poetic gift; in all the apparent dishonour he never acquires any meanness of soul, he still sees things truly, though he is clogged by the heavy weight of his body. He is the prophet who speaks about mysteries, without the power to persuade his dull audience, without the power to go out in the manner of his youth to make conquests. He sits still among the shepherds, casting his divinations among them-" uncertain whether oracles or jargon." For the sake of his undegraded spirit, Athena remains loyal to him, and helps him out of his dishonourable sloth and purposeless brooding. He comes to the side of Dionysus again, and gets his deliverance in the last great battle against Lycurgus. The poem might easily lend itself to all sorts of commentary-moral, allegorical, or tropological. But fortunately it can be understood without. It is a very carefully, studied description of the fall and the recovery of a noble character. Where "Silenus" is most modern, is in the importance it gives to memory, both as a corrupting and as a saving influence-Silenus is "Silenus." By Thomas Woolner. London: Macmillan & Co. 1884. crippled by his regret for Syrinx, but Athena shows him how the gods, being strong, remember lost things without regret. The threnody of women at the end seems to repeat this. Mr. Bridges has written a drama about Prometheus, which gives the incidents of the philanthropic action, the gift-or rather, according to this poem-the restoration of fire to mankind. Prometheus describes in the prologue how Zeus had, out of spite against men, drowned most of them in a deluge, and taken away fire, "and so the tyrant was content." Prometheus brings fire to King Machus at Argos, pursuades him to give over reverencing Zeus, and foretells the wanderings of Io. The play ends with a chorus of thanksgiving to the benefactor, of rejoicing in the new religion that gives freedom in place of terror. The plan of the drama is very simple. It is the first part of a tragic sequence. It does not complete the tragedy; it looks forward. There is an apprehension of danger to come; but that is forgotten in the thanksgiving. There is no mystery about the play. The anger of Zeus is taken account of and expected by all the persons of the drama. There is no tragic complication;-no secret to be discovered. The verse of the drama is kept free from all luxuriance and licence. The lyrics are occasionally too harsh and constrained in their simplicity. The chorus beginning "O miserable man, hear now the worst," has some noble passages of meditation. "Or if some patient heart In toilsome steps of duty tread apart, She must see others bleed, At others' misery moan, And learn the common suffering is her own From which it is no freedom to be freed: Nay, Nature, her best nurse, Is tender, but to breed a finer sense, Which she may easier wound, with smart the worse And torture more intense." "Vagabunduli Libellus" is a book of sonnets grouped under different titles. There is one scries with the title "Stella Maris" that, as the preface explains, is meant to complete the "Animi Figura given in Mr. Symonds's last volume of poetry. In the other sections the thought is frequently continued from sonnet to sonnet, but less strictly than in "Stella Maris," which is as nearly as possible a narrative poem. It is the most exacting part of the book. The author has intentionally sacrificed clearness of narrative to intensity of passion and thought. The passion of his imaginary character is concentrated in the sonnets. Its burning strength is beyond question. The effect is that the reader's judgment is indeed, for the moment, to sympathize too closely with the tumult of mind represented in the poems; the reader is kept prisoner in the darkness among the crowd of thoughts in anguish, and he wants to get out and see how the dramatis persona look viewed from the less exciting ground in front of the stage. In all the sonnets of the book there is evident one steady endeavour to say the best possible thing in the best possible way. There is nothing relaxing or enervating in the poems. The author is not afraid of the spells of the Palace of Art. He is not a simple tenant or inmate of "Prometheus the Firegiver." By Robert Bridges. London: George Bell & Sons. +"Vagabunduli Libellus." By J. A. Symonds, London: Kegan Paul, Trench & Co. 1884. |