GEMMA.  All folly, naught but folly. 
   DANTE.  Thou canst not understand the mandates given
   To poets by their goddess Poesy. . . . 
   GEMMA.  Canst ne’er speak prose?  Why daily clothe thy thoughts
   In strangest garb, as if thy wits played fool
   At masquerade, where no man knows a maid
   From matron?  Fie on poets’ mutterings! 
   DANTE (to himself).  If, then, the soul absorbed at last to whole—­
   GEMMA.  Fie! fie!  I say.  Art thou bewitched? 
   DANTE.  O! peace. 
   GEMMA.  Dost thou deem me deaf and dumb? 
   DANTE.  O! that thou wert.

Dante is certainly rude, but Gemma is dreadful.  The play is well meant but it is lumbering and heavy, and the blank verse has absolutely no merit.

Father O’Flynn and Other Irish Lyrics, by Mr. A. P. Graves, is a collection of poems in the style of Lover.  Most of them are written in dialect, and, for the benefit of English readers, notes are appended in which the uninitiated are informed that ‘brogue’ means a boot, that ‘mavourneen’ means my dear, and that ‘astore’ is a term of affection.  Here is a specimen of Mr. Graves’s work: 

   ’Have you e’er a new song,
      My Limerick Poet,
   To help us along
      Wid this terrible boat,
   Away over to Tork?’
      ’Arrah I understand;
   For all of your work,
      ’Twill tighten you, boys,
   To cargo that sand
   To the overside strand,
      Wid the current so strong
      Unless you’ve a song—­
   A song to lighten and brighten you, boys. . . . ’

It is a very dreary production and does not ‘lighten and brighten’ us a bit.  The whole volume should be called The Lucubrations of a Stage Irishman.

The anonymous author of The Judgment of the City is a sort of bad Blake.  So at least his prelude seems to suggest: 

      Time, the old viol-player,
      For ever thrills his ancient strings
   With the flying bow of Fate, and thence
   Much discord, but some music, brings.

      His ancient strings are truth,
      Love, hate, hope, fear;
      And his choicest melody
      Is the song of the faithful seer.

As he progresses, however, he develops into a kind of inferior Clough and writes heavy hexameters upon modern subjects: 

Here for a moment stands in the light at the door of a playhouse, One who is dignified, masterly, hard in the pride of his station; Here too, the stateliest of matrons, sour in the pride of her station; With them their daughter, sad-faced and listless, half-crushed to their likeness.

He has every form of sincerity except the sincerity of the artist, a defect that he shares with most of our popular writers.

(1) Love’s Widowhood and Other Poems.  By Alfred Austin. (Macmillan and Co.)

(2) Poems and Translations.  By W. J. Linton. (Nimmo.)