How exquisite and fanciful this stray lyric: 

   The wind comes from the west to-night;
      So sweetly down the lane he bloweth
   Upon my lips, with pure delight
      From head to foot my body gloweth.

   Where did the wind, the magic find
      To charm me thus? say, heart that knoweth! 
   ’Within a rose on which he blows
      Before upon thy lips he bloweth!’

We admit that Mr. Skipsey’s work is extremely unequal, but when it is at its best it is full of sweetness and strength; and though he has carefully studied the artistic capabilities of language, he never makes his form formal by over-polishing.  Beauty with him seems to be an unconscious result rather than a conscious aim; his style has all the delicate charm of chance.  We have already pointed out his affinity to Blake, but with Burns also he may be said to have a spiritual kinship, and in the songs of the Northumbrian miner we meet with something of the Ayrshire peasant’s wild gaiety and mad humour.  He gives himself up freely to his impressions, and there is a fine, careless rapture in his laughter.  The whole book deserves to be read, and much of it deserves to be loved.  Mr. Skipsey can find music for every mood, whether he is dealing with the real experiences of the pitman or with the imaginative experiences of the poet, and his verse has a rich vitality about it.  In these latter days of shallow rhymes it is pleasant to come across some one to whom poetry is a passion not a profession.

Mr. F. B. Doveton belongs to a different school.  In his amazing versatility he reminds us of the gentleman who wrote the immortal handbills for Mrs. Jarley, for his subjects range from Dr. Carter Moffatt and the Ammoniaphone to Mr. Whiteley, Lady Bicyclists, and the Immortality of the Soul.  His verses in praise of Zoedone are a fine example of didactic poetry, his elegy on the death of Jumbo is quite up to the level of the subject, and the stanzas on a watering-place,

   Who of its merits can e’er think meanly? 
      Scattering ozone to all the land!

are well worthy of a place in any shilling guidebook.  Mr. Doveton divides his poems into grave and gay, but we like him least when he is amusing, for in his merriment there is but little melody, and he makes his muse grin through a horse-collar.  When he is serious he is much better, and his descriptive poems show that he has completely mastered the most approved poetical phraseology.  Our old friend Boreas is as ‘burly’ as ever, ‘zephyrs’ are consistently ‘amorous,’ and ’the welkin rings’ upon the smallest provocation; birds are ‘the feathered host’ or ‘the sylvan throng,’ the wind ‘wantons o’er the lea,’ ‘vernal gales’ murmur to ‘crystal rills,’ and Lempriere’s Dictionary supplies the Latin names for the sun and the moon.  Armed with these daring and novel expressions Mr. Doveton indulges in fierce moods of nature-worship, and botanises recklessly through the