antiquity and classical association; not that strong love which made
Shelley, as it were, the heir of Plato; not that vital grasp of
conception which enabled Keats without, and enables Landor with, the
most intimate knowledge of form and detail, to return to and renew
the old thoughts and beliefs of Greece; still less the mere
superficial acquaintance with names and hackneyed attributes which
was once poetry. Of this conventionalism, however, we have detected
two instances; the first, an allusion to "shy Dian's horn" in
"breathless glades" of the days we live, peculiarly inappropriate in
a sonnet addressed "To George Cruikshank on his Picture of 'The
Bottle;'" the second a grave call to Memory to bring her tablets,
occurring in, and forming the burden of, a poem strictly personal,
and written for a particular occasion. But the author's partiality is
shown, exclusively of such poems as "Mycerinus" and "The Strayed
Reveller," where the subjects are taken from antiquity, rather in the
framing than in the ground work, as in the titles "A Modern Sappho,"
"The New Sirens," "Stagyrus," and "_In utrumque paratus_." It is
Homer and Epictetus and Sophocles who "prop his mind;" the immortal
air which the poet breathes is "Where Orpheus and where Homer are;"
and he addresses "Fausta" and "Critias."

There are four narrative poems in the volume:--"Mycerinus," "The
Strayed Reveller," "The Sick King in Bokhara," and "The Forsaken
Merman." The first of these, the only one altogether narrative in
form, founded on a passage in the 2nd Book of Herodotus, is the story
of the six years of life portioned to a King of Egypt succeeding a
father "who had loved injustice, and lived long;" and tells how he
who had "loved the good" revels out his "six drops of time." He takes
leave of his people with bitter words, and goes out

"To the cool regions of the groves he loved........
Here came the king holding high feast at morn,
Rose-crowned; and ever, when the sun went down,
A hundred lamps beamed in the tranquil gloom,
From tree to tree, all thro' the twinkling grove,
Revealing all the tumult of the feast,
Flushed guests, and golden goblets foamed with wine;
While the deep-burnished foliage overhead
Splintered the silver arrows of the moon."--p. 7.

(a daring image, verging towards a conceit, though not absolutely
such, and the only one of that character that has struck us in the
volume.)

"So six long years he revelled, n