ith a recklessness that is absolutely fatal to the cause he
pleads. For mediocre critics are usually safe in their generalities; it
is in their reasons and examples that they come so lamentably to grief.
When, for instance, Mr. Sharp tells us that lines with the 'natural
magic' of Shakespeare, Keats and Coleridge are 'far from infrequent' in
Mr. Austin's poems, all that we can say is that we have never come across
any lines of the kind in Mr. Austin's published works, but it is
difficult to help smiling when Mr. Sharp gravely calls upon us to note
'the illuminative significance' of such a commonplace verse as

My manhood keeps the dew of morn,
And what have I to give;
Being right glad that I was born,
And thankful that I live.

Nor do Mr. Sharp's constant misquotations really help him out of his
difficulties. Such a line as

A meadow ribbed with _drying_ swathes of hay,

has at least the merit of being a simple, straightforward description of
an ordinary scene in an English landscape, but not much can be said in
favour of

A meadow ribbed with _dying_ swathes of hay,

which is Mr. Sharp's own version, and one that he finds 'delightfully
suggestive.' It is indeed suggestive, but only of that want of care that
comes from want of taste.

On the whole, Mr. Sharp has attempted an impossible task. Mr. Austin is
neither an Olympian nor a Titan, and all the puffing in Paternoster Row
cannot set him on Parnassus.

His verse is devoid of all real rhythmical life; it may have the metre of
poetry, but it has not often got its music, nor can there be any true
delicacy in the ear that tolerates such rhymes as 'chord' and 'abroad.'
Even the claim that Mr. Sharp puts forward for him, that his muse takes
her impressions directly from nature and owes nothing to books, cannot be
sustained for a moment. Wordsworth is a great poet, but bad echoes of
Wordsworth are extremely depressing, and when Mr. Austin calls the cuckoo a

Voyaging voice

and tells us that

The stockdove _broods_
Low to itself,

we must really enter a protest against such silly plagiarisms.

Perhaps, however, we are treating Mr. Sharp too seriously. He admits
himself that it was at the special request of the compiler of the
Calendar that he wrote the preface at all, and though he courteously adds
that the task is agreeable to him, still he shows only too clearly that
he considers it a task and, like a clever lawy