Mr. Williamson’s Poems of Nature and Life are as orthodox in spirit as they are commonplace in form.  A few harmless heresies of art and thought would do this poet no harm.  Nearly everything that he says has been said before and said better.  The only original thing in the volume is the description of Mr. Robert Buchanan’s ‘grandeur of mind.’  This is decidedly new.

Dr. Cockle tells us that Mullner’s Guilt and The Ancestress of Grillparzer are the masterpieces of German fate-tragedy.  His translation of the first of these two masterpieces does not make us long for any further acquaintance with the school.  Here is a specimen from the fourth act of the fate-tragedy.

   SCENE VIII.

   ELVIRA.  HUGO.

   ELVIRA (after long silence, leaving the harp, steps to Hugo, and seeks
   his gaze).

   HUGO (softly).  Though I made sacrifice of thy sweet life.  The Father
   has forgiven.  Can the wife—­Forgive?

   ELVIRA (on his breast).  She can!

   HUGO (with all the warmth of love).  Dear wife!

   ELVIRA (after a pause, in deep sorrow).  Must it be so, beloved one?

   HUGO (sorry to have betrayed himself).  What?

In his preface to The Circle of Seasons, a series of hymns and verses for the seasons of the Church, the Rev. T. B. Dover expresses a hope that this well-meaning if somewhat tedious book ’may be of value to those many earnest people to whom the subjective aspect of truth is helpful.’  The poem beginning

   Lord, in the inn of my poor worthless heart
      Guests come and go; but there is room for Thee,

has some merit and might be converted into a good sonnet.  The majority of the poems, however, are quite worthless.  There seems to be some curious connection between piety and poor rhymes.

Lord Henry Somerset’s verse is not so good as his music.  Most of the Songs of Adieu are marred by their excessive sentimentality of feeling and by the commonplace character of their weak and lax form.  There is nothing that is new and little that is true in verse of this kind: 

   The golden leaves are falling,
      Falling one by one,
   Their tender ‘Adieux’ calling
      To the cold autumnal sun. 
   The trees in the keen and frosty air
      Stand out against the sky,
   ’Twould seem they stretch their branches bare
      To Heaven in agony.

It can be produced in any quantity.  Lord Henry Somerset has too much heart and too little art to make a good poet, and such art as he does possess is devoid of almost every intellectual quality and entirely lacking in any intellectual strength.  He has nothing to say and says it.

Mrs. Cora M. Davis is eloquent about the splendours of what the authoress of The Circle of Seasons calls ‘this earthly ball.’

   Let’s sing the beauties of this grand old earth,