In Australia alone (says Mr. Clarke) is to be found the Grotesque, the Weird, the strange scribblings of nature learning how to write.  But the dweller in the wilderness acknowledges the subtle charm of the fantastic land of monstrosities.  He becomes familiar with the beauty of loneliness.  Whispered to by the myriad tongues of the wilderness, he learns the language of the barren and the uncouth, and can read the hieroglyphs of haggard gum-trees, blown into odd shapes, distorted with fierce hot winds, or cramped with cold nights, when the Southern Cross freezes in a cloudless sky of icy blue.  The phantasmagoria of that wild dream-land termed the Bush interprets itself, and the Poet of our desolation begins to comprehend why free Esau loved his heritage of desert sand better than all the bountiful richness of Egypt.

Here, certainly, is new material for the poet, here is a land that is waiting for its singer.  Such a singer Gordon was not.  He remained thoroughly English, and the best that we can say of him is that he wrote imperfectly in Australia those poems that in England he might have made perfect.

Poems.  By Adam Lindsay Gordon. (Samuel Mullen.)

THE POETS’ CORNER—­IX

(Pall Mall Gazette, March 30, 1889.)

Judges, like the criminal classes, have their lighter moments, and it was probably in one of his happiest and, certainly, in one of his most careless moods that Mr. Justice Denman conceived the idea of putting the early history of Rome into doggerel verse for the benefit of a little boy of the name of Jack.  Poor Jack!  He is still, we learn from the preface, under six years of age, and it is sad to think of the future career of a boy who is being brought up on bad history and worse poetry.  Here is a passage from the learned judge’s account of Romulus: 

   Poor Tatius by some unknown hand
      Was soon assassinated,
   Some said by Romulus’ command;
      I know not—­but ’twas fated.

   Sole King again, this Romulus
      Play’d some fantastic tricks,
   Lictors he had, who hatchets bore
      Bound up with rods of sticks.

   He treated all who thwarted him
      No better than a dog,
   Sometimes ’twas ‘Heads off, Lictors, there!’
      Sometimes ‘Ho!  Lictors, flog!’

   Then he created Senators,
      And gave them rings of gold;
   Old soldiers all; their name deriv’d
      From ‘Senex’ which means ‘old.’

   Knights, too, he made, good horsemen all,
      Who always were at hand
   To execute immediately
      Whate’er he might command.

   But these were of Patrician rank,
      Plebeians all the rest;
   Remember this distinction, Jack! 
      For ’tis a useful test.

The reign of Tullius Hostilius opens with a very wicked rhyme: 

   As Numa, dying, only left
      A daughter, named Pompilia,
   The Senate had to choose a King. 
      They choose one sadly sillier.