“Wise were the Augurers of old, nor erred
    In substance, deeming that the life of man—­
    (This is a new reflection, spick and span)—­
  May be much influenced by the flight of birds. 
    Our senate can no longer hold their house
    When culminates the evil star of grouse;
  And stoutest patriots will their shot-belts gird
  When first o’er stubble-field hath partridge whirred.”—­p.25.

In these others there is more purpose, with a no less definite conciseness: 

  “Comes forth the first great poet.  Then a number
  Of followers leave much literary lumber. 
  He cuts his phrases in the sapling grain
    Of language; and so weaves them at his will. 
  They from his wickerwork extract with pain
    The wands now warped and stiffened, which but ill
  Bend to their second-hand employment.”—­pp. 4, 5.

    “What’s life?  A riddle;
  Or sieve which sifts you thro’ it in the middle.”—­p.45.

The misadventures of the five friends on their road to Nornyth are very sufficiently described: 

  “The night was cold and cloudy as they topped
    A moorland slope, and met the bitter blast,
  So cutting that their ears it almost cropped;
    And rain began to fall extremely fast. 
  A broken sign-post left them in great doubt
    About two roads; and, when an hour was passed,
  They learned their error from a lucid lout;
  Soon after, one by one, their lamps went out.”—­p.29.

There remains to point out one fault,—­and that the last fault the occurrence of which could be looked for, after so clearly expressed an intention as this: 

  “But, if an Author takes to writing fine,
    (Which means, I think, an artificial tone),
  The public sicken and won’t read a line. 
  I hope there’s nothing of this sort in mine.”—­p. 6.

A quotation or two will fully explain our meaning:  and we would seriously ask Mr. Cayley to reflect whether he has always borne his principle in mind, and avoided “writing fine;” whether he has not sometimes fallen into high-flown common-place of the most undisguised stamp, rendered, moreover, doubly inexcusable and out of place by being put into the mouth of one of the personages of the poem; It is Sir Reginald Mohun that speaks; and truly, though not thrust forward as a “wondrous paragon of praise,” he must be confessed to be,

  “Judging by specimens the author quotes,
  An utterer of most ordinary phrases,”

not words only and sentences, but real phrases, in the more distinct and specific sense of the term.

      “’There, while yet a new born thing,
    Death o’er my cradle waved his darksome wing;
  My mother died to give me birth:  forlorn
    I came into the world, a babe of woe,
  Ill-omened from my childhood’s early morn;
    Yet heir to what the idolators of show
    Deem life’s good things, which earthly bliss bestow.