and whenever Mr. Harrison writes about nature he is certainly pleasing and picturesque but, as a rule, he is over-anxious about himself and forgets that the personal expression of joy or sorrow is not poetry, though it may afford excellent material for a sentimental diary.

The daily increasing class of readers that likes unintelligible poetry should study AEonial.  It is in many ways a really remarkable production.  Very fantastic, very daring, crowded with strange metaphor and clouded by monstrous imagery, it has a sort of turbid splendour about it, and should the author some day add meaning to his music he may give us a true work of art.  At present he hardly realises that an artist should be articulate.

Seymour’s Inheritance is a short novel in blank verse.  On the whole, it is very harmless both in manner and matter, but we must protest against such lines as

   And in the windows of his heart the blinds
   Of happiness had been drawn down by Grief,

for a simile committing suicide is always a depressing spectacle.  Some of the other poems are so simple and modest that we hope Mr. Ross will not carry out his threat of issuing a ‘more pretentious volume.’  Pretentious volumes of poetry are very common and very worthless.

Mr. Brodie’s Lyrics of the Sea are spirited and manly, and show a certain freedom of rhythmical movement, pleasant in days of wooden verse.  He is at his best, however, in his sonnets.  Their architecture is not always of the finest order but, here and there, one meets with lines that are graceful and felicitous.

Like silver swallows on a summer morn
Cutting the air with momentary wings,

is pretty, and on flowers Mr. Brodie writes quite charmingly.  The only thoroughly bad piece in the book is The Workman’s Song.  Nothing can be said in favour of

Is there a bit of blue, boys? 
Is there a bit of blue? 
In heaven’s leaden hue, boys? 
’Tis hope’s eye peeping through . . .

for optimism of this kind is far more dispiriting than Schopenhauer or Hartmann at their worst, nor are there really any grounds for supposing that the British workman enjoys third-rate poetry.

(1) The Discovery and Other Poems.  By Glenessa. (National Publishing Co.)

(2) Vortigern and Rowena:  A Dramatic Cantata.  By Edwin Ellis Griffin.  (Hutchings and Crowsley.)

(3) The Poems of Madame de la Mothe Guyon.  Edited and arranged by the Rev. A. Saunders Dyer, M.A. (Bryce and Son.)

(4) Stanzas and Sonnets.  By J. Pierce, M.A. (Longmans, Green and Co.)

(5) In Hours of Leisure.  By Clifford Harrison. (Kegan Paul.)

(6) AEonial.  By the Author of The White Africans. (Elliot Stock.)

(7) Seymour’s Inheritance.  By James Ross. (Arrowsmith.)

(8) Lyrics of the Sea.  By E. H. Brodie. (Bell and Sons.)

MR. PATER’S IMAGINARY PORTRAITS