is the concluding stanza of the last rondeau—­indeed, of the last poem in the collection, and the high, serene temper displayed in these lines serves at once as keynote and keystone to the book.  The very lightness and slightness of so much of the work, its careless moods and casual fancies, seem to suggest a nature that is not primarily interested in art—­a nature, like Sordello’s, passionately enamoured of life, one to which lyre and lute are things of less importance.  From this mere joy of living, this frank delight in experience for its own sake, this lofty indifference, and momentary unregretted ardours, come all the faults and all the beauties of the volume.  But there is this difference between them—­the faults are deliberate, and the result of much study; the beauties have the air of fascinating impromptus.  Mr. Henley’s healthy, if sometimes misapplied, confidence in the myriad suggestions of life gives him his charm.  He is made to sing along the highways, not to sit down and write.  If he took himself more seriously, his work would become trivial.

* * * * *

Mr. William Sharp takes himself very seriously and has written a preface to his Romantic Ballads and Poems of Phantasy, which is, on the whole, the most interesting part of his volume.  We are all, it seems, far too cultured, and lack robustness.  ‘There are those amongst us,’ says Mr. Sharp, ’who would prefer a dexterously-turned triolet to such apparently uncouth measures as Thomas the Rhymer, or the ballad of Clerk Saunders:  who would rather listen to the drawing-room music of the Villanelle than to the wild harp-playing by the mill-dams o’ Binnorie, or the sough of the night-wind o’er drumly Annan water.’  Such an expression as ’the drawing-room music of the Villanelle’ is not very happy, and I cannot imagine any one with the smallest pretensions to culture preferring a dexterously turned triolet to a fine imaginative ballad, as it is only the Philistine who ever dreams of comparing works of art that are absolutely different in motive, in treatment, and in form.  If English Poetry is in danger—­and, according to Mr. Sharp, the poor nymph is in a very critical state—­what she has to fear is not the fascination of dainty metre or delicate form, but the predominance of the intellectual spirit over the spirit of beauty.  Lord Tennyson dethroned Wordsworth as a literary influence, and later on Mr. Swinburne filled all the mountain valleys with echoes of his own song.  The influence to-day is that of Mr. Browning.  And as for the triolets, and the rondels, and the careful study of metrical subtleties, these things are merely the signs of a desire for perfection in small things and of the recognition of poetry as an art.  They have had certainly one good result—­they have made our minor poets readable, and have not left us entirely at the mercy of geniuses.