would thrill any Tory tea-party in the provinces, and it would be difficult for the advocates of Coercion to find a more appropriate or a more characteristic peroration for a stump speech than

   We have not to do with justice, right depends on point of view,
   The one question for our thought is, what’s our neighbour going to do.

The hymn to the Union Jack, also, would make a capital leaflet for distribution in boroughs where the science of heraldry is absolutely unknown, and the sonnet on Mr. Gladstone is sure to be popular with all who admire violence and vulgarity in literature.  It is quite worthy of Thersites at his best.

Mr. Evans’s Caesar Borgia is a very tedious tragedy.  Some of the passages are in the true ‘Ercles’ vein,’ like the following: 

   CAESAR (starting up). 
   Help, Michelotto, help!  Begone!  Begone! 
   Fiends! torments! devils!  Gandia!  What, Gandia? 
   O turn those staring eyes away.  See!  See
   He bleeds to death!  O fly!  Who are those fiends
   That tug me by the throat?  O!  O!  O!  O! (Pauses.)

But, as a rule, the style is of a more commonplace character.  The other poems in the volume are comparatively harmless, though it is sad to find Shakespeare’s ‘Bacchus with pink eyne’ reappearing as ’pinky-eyed Silenus.’

The Cross and the Grail is a collection of poems on the subject of temperance.  Compared to real poetry these verses are as ’water unto wine,’ but no doubt this was the effect intended.  The illustrations are quite dreadful, especially one of an angel appearing to a young man from Chicago who seems to be drinking brown sherry.

Juvenal in Piccadilly and The Excellent Mystery are two fierce social satires and, like most satires, they are the product of the corruption they pillory.  The first is written on a very convenient principle.  Blank spaces are left for the names of the victims and these the reader can fill up as he wishes.

   Must—­bluster,—­give the lie,
   —­wear the night out,—­sneer!

is an example of this anonymous method.  It does not seem to us very effective.  The Excellent Mystery is much better.  It is full of clever epigrammatic lines, and its wit fully atones for its bitterness.  It is hardly a poem to quote but it is certainly a poem to read.

The Chronicle of Mites is a mock-heroic poem about the inhabitants of a decaying cheese who speculate about the origin of their species and hold learned discussions upon the meaning of evolution and the Gospel according to Darwin.  This cheese-epic is a rather unsavoury production and the style is at times so monstrous and so realistic that the author should be called the Gorgon-Zola of literature.

(1) Salome.  By J. C. Heywood. (Kegan Paul.)

(2) Sonnets and Other Poems.  By William Griffiths. (Digby and Long.)

(3) Fires of Green Wood.  By Francis Prevost. (Kegan Paul.)