I myself am rather inclined to prefer this sonnet on Mr. Watts’s Psyche.  The sixth line is deficient; but, in spite of the faulty technique, there is a great deal that is suggestive in it: 

   Unfathomable boundless mystery,
   Last work of the Creator, deathless, vast,
   Soul—­essence moulded of a changeful past;
   Thou art the offspring of Eternity;
   Breath of his breath, by his vitality
   Engendered, in his image cast,
   Part of the Nature-song whereof the last
   Chord soundeth never in the harmony. 
   ‘Psyche’!  Thy form is shadowed o’er with pain
   Born of intensest longing, and the rain
   Of a world’s weeping lieth like a sea
   Of silent soundless sorrow in thine eyes. 
   Yet grief is not eternal, for clouds rise
   From out the ocean everlastingly.

I have to thank Mr. William Rossetti for kindly allowing me to reproduce Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s drawing of the authoress of Goblin Market; and thanks are also due to Mr. Lafayette, of Dublin, for the use of his photograph of H.R.H. the Princess of Wales in her Academic Robes as Doctor of Music, which served as our frontispiece last month, and to Messrs. Hills and Saunders, of Oxford, and Mr. Lord and Mr. Blanchard, of Cambridge, for a similar courtesy in the case of the article on Greek Plays at the Universities.

(1) Canute the Great.  By Michael Field. (Bell and Sons.)

(2) Life of Elizabeth Gilbert.  By Frances Martin. (Macmillan and Co.)

(3) Ourselves and Our Neighbours.  By Louise Chandler Moulton. (Ward and Downey.)

(4) Warring Angels. (Fisher Unwin.)

(5) A Song of Jubilee and Other Poems.  By Mrs. De Courcy Laffan. (Kegan Paul.)

(6) Life of Madame de Stael.  By Bella Duffy.  ‘Eminent Women’ Series.

(7) Life of Mrs. Godolphin.  By John Evelyn, Esq., of Wooton.  Edited by William Harcourt of Nuneham. (Sampson Low, Marston and Co.)

THE POETS’ CORNER—­V

(Pall Mall Gazette, February 15, 1888.)

Mr. Heywood’s Salome seems to have thrilled the critics of the United States.  From a collection of press notices prefixed to the volume we learn that Putnam’s Magazine has found in it ’the simplicity and grace of naked Grecian statues,’ and that Dr. Jos.  G. Cogswell, LL.D., has declared that it will live to be appreciated ’as long as the English language endures.’  Remembering that prophecy is the most gratuitous form of error, we will not attempt to argue with Dr. Jos.  G. Cogswell, LL.D., but will content ourselves with protesting against such a detestable expression as ‘naked Grecian statues.’  If this be the literary style of the future the English language will not endure very long.  As for the poem itself, the best that one can say of it is that it is a triumph of conscientious industry.  From an artistic point of view it is a very commonplace production indeed, and we must protest against such blank verse as the following: