er or a popular clergyman,
tries to atone for his lack of sincerity by a pleasing over-emphasis. Nor
is there any reason why this Calendar should not be a great success. If
published as a broad-sheet, with a picture of Mr. Austin 'conversing with
AEneas,' it might gladden many a simple cottage home and prove a source
of innocent amusement to the Conservative working-man.

Days of the Year: A Poetic Calendar from the Works of Alfred Austin.
Selected and edited by A. S. With Introduction by William Sharp. (Walter
Scott.)

THE POETS' CORNER--II

(Pall Mall Gazette, March 8, 1837.)

A little schoolboy was once asked to explain the difference between prose
and poetry. After some consideration he replied, '"blue violets" is
prose, and "violets blue" is poetry.' The distinction, we admit, is not
exhaustive, but it seems to be the one that is extremely popular with our
minor poets. Opening at random The Queens Innocent we come across
passages like this:

Full gladly would I sit
Of such a potent magus at the feet,

and this:

The third, while yet a youth,
Espoused a lady noble but not royal,
_One only son who gave him_--Pharamond--

lines that, apparently, rest their claim to be regarded as poetry on
their unnecessary and awkward inversions. Yet this poem is not without
beauty, and the character of Nardi, the little prince who is treated as
the Court fool, shows a delicate grace of fancy, and is both tender and
true. The most delightful thing in the whole volume is a little lyric
called April, which is like a picture set to music.

The Chimneypiece of Bruges is a narrative poem in blank verse, and tells
us of a young artist who, having been unjustly convicted of his wife's
murder, spends his life in carving on the great chimneypiece of the
prison the whole story of his love and suffering. The poem is full of
colour, but the blank verse is somewhat heavy in movement. There are
some pretty things in the book, and a poet without hysterics is rare.

Dr. Dawson Burns's Oliver Cromwell is a pleasant panegyric on the
Protector, and reads like a prize poem by a nice sixth-form boy. The
verses on The Good Old Times should be sent as a leaflet to all Tories of
Mr. Chaplin's school, and the lines on Bunker's Hill, beginning,

I stand on Bunker's towering pile,

are sure to be popular in America.

K. E. V.'s little volume is a series of poems on the Saints. Each poem
is preceded