if this be not, as we hope it is, a printer’s error.  What the Australians liked best were his spirited, if somewhat rough, horse-racing and hunting poems.  Indeed, it was not till he found that How We Beat the Favourite was on everybody’s lips that he consented to forego his anonymity and appear in the unsuspected character of a verse-writer, having up to that time produced his poems shyly, scribbled them on scraps of paper, and sent them unsigned to the local magazines.  The fact is that the social atmosphere of Melbourne was not favourable to poets, and the worthy colonials seem to have shared Audrey’s doubts as to whether poetry was a true and honest thing.  It was not till Gordon won the Cup Steeplechase for Major Baker in 1868 that he became really popular, and probably there were many who felt that to steer Babbler to the winning-post was a finer achievement than ‘to babble o’er green fields.’

On the whole, it is impossible not to regret that Gordon ever emigrated.  His literary power cannot be denied, but it was stunted in uncongenial surroundings and marred by the rude life he was forced to lead.  Australia has converted many of our failures into prosperous and admirable mediocrities, but she certainly spoiled one of our poets for us.  Ovid at Tomi is not more tragic than Gordon driving cattle or farming an unprofitable sheep-ranch.

That Australia, however, will some day make amends by producing a poet of her own we cannot doubt, and for him there will be new notes to sound and new wonders to tell of.  The description, given by Mr. Marcus Clarke in the preface to this volume, of the aspect and spirit of Nature in Australia is most curious and suggestive.  The Australian forests, he tells us, are funereal and stern, and ’seem to stifle, in their black gorges, a story of sullen despair.’  No leaves fall from the trees, but ’from the melancholy gum strips of white bark hang and rustle.  Great grey kangaroos hop noiselessly over the coarse grass.  Flights of cockatoos stream out, shrieking like evil souls.  The sun suddenly sinks and the mopokes burst out into horrible peals of semi-human laughter.’  The aborigines aver that, when night comes, from the bottomless depth of some lagoon a misshapen monster rises, dragging his loathsome length along the ooze.  From a corner of the silent forest rises a dismal chant, and around a fire dance natives painted like skeletons.  All is fear-inspiring and gloomy.  No bright fancies are linked with the memories of the mountains.  Hopeless explorers have named them out of their sufferings—­Mount Misery, Mount Dreadful, Mount Despair.