‘Thou sprang’ is slightly depressing, and the second line is rather obscure, but we should not measure by too high a standard the untutored utterances of artless nature.  The opening lines of The Vendetta also deserve mention: 

   When stars are glowing through day’s gloaming glow,
   Reflecting from ocean’s deep, mighty flow,
   At twilight, when no grim shadows of night,
   Like ghouls, have stalked in wake of the light.

The first line is certainly a masterpiece, and, indeed, the whole volume is full of gems of this kind.  The Professor remarks in his elaborate preface that Mr. Peacock ‘frequently rises to the sublime,’ and the two passages quoted above show how keenly critical is his taste in these matters and how well the poet deserves his panegyric.

Mr. Alexander Skene Smith’s Holiday Recreations and Other Poems is heralded by a preface for which Principal Cairns is responsible.  Principal Cairns claims that the life-story enshrined in Mr. Smith’s poems shows the wide diffusion of native fire and literary culture in all parts of Scotland, ’happily under higher auspices than those of mere poetic impulse.’  This is hardly a very felicitous way of introducing a poet, nor can we say that Mr. Smith’s poems are distinguished by either fire or culture.  He has a placid, pleasant way of writing, and, indeed, his verses cannot do any harm, though he really should not publish such attempts at metrical versions of the Psalms as the following: 

   A septuagenarian
      We frequently may see;
   An octogenarian
      If one should live to be,
   He is a burden to himself
      With weariness and woe
   And soon he dies, and off he flies,
      And leaveth all below.

The ‘literary culture’ that produced these lines is, we fear, not of a very high order.

’I study Poetry simply as a fine art by which I may exercise my intellect and elevate my taste,’ wrote the late Mr. George Morine many years ago to a friend, and the little posthumous volume that now lies before us contains the record of his quiet literary life.  One of the sonnets, that entitled Sunset, appeared in Mr. Waddington’s anthology, about ten years after Mr. Morine’s death, but this is the first time that his collected poems have been published.  They are often distinguished by a grave and chastened beauty of style, and their solemn cadences have something of the ‘grand manner’ about them.  The editor, Mr. Wilton, to whom Mr. Morine bequeathed his manuscripts, seems to have performed his task with great tact and judgment, and we hope that this little book will meet with the recognition that it deserves.

(1) The Ballad of Hadji and Other Poems.  By Ian Hamilton. (Kegan Paul.)

(2) Poems in the Modern Spirit, with The Secret of Content.  By Charles Catty. (Walter Scott.)

(3) The Banshee and Other Poems.  By John Todhunter. (Kegan Paul.)