lyric poem, "To Fausta" has a Shelleian spirit and grace in
it. & "The Hayswater Boat" seems a little _got up_, and is scarcely
positive enough. This remark applies also, and in a stonger degree,
to the "Stanzas on a Gipsy Child," which, and the "Modern Sappho,"
previously mentioned, are the pieces least to our taste in the
volume. There is a something about them of drawing-room
sentimentality; and they might almost, without losing much save in
size, be compressed into poems of the class commonly set to music. It
is rather the basis of thought than the writing of the "Gipsy Child,"
which affords cause for objection; nevertheless, there is a passage
in which a comparison is started between this child and a "Seraph in
an alien planet born,"--an idea not new, and never, as we think,
worth much; for it might require some subtlety to show how a planet
capable of producing a Seraph should be alien from that Seraph.

We may here notice a few cases of looseness, either of thought or of
expression, to be met with in these pages; a point of style to be
particularly looked to when the occurrence or the absence of such
forms one very sensible difference between the first-rate and the
second-rate poets of the present times.

Thus, in the sonnet "Shakspear," the conclusion says,

"All pains the immortal spirit must endure,
All weakness that impairs, all griefs that bow,
Find their sole _voice_ in that victorious brow;"

whereas a brow's voice remains to be uttered: nor, till the nature of
the victory gained by the brow shall have been pointed out, are we
able to hazard an opinion of the precise value of the epithet.

In the address to George Cruikshank, we find: "Artist, whose hand
with horror _winged_;" where a similar question arises; and,
returning to the "Gipsy Child," we are struck with the unmeaningness
of the line: "Who massed round that slight brow these clouds of
doom?"

Nor does the following, from the first of the sonnets, "To a
Republican Friend," appear reconcileable with any ideas of
appropriateness:

----"While before me _flow_
The _armies_ of the homeless and unfed."

It is but right to state that the only instance of the kind we
remember throughout the volume have now been mentioned.

To conclude. Our extracts will enable the reader to judge of this
Poet's style: it is clear and comprehensive, and eschews flowery
adornment. No particular model has been followed, though that general
influen