day add meaning to his music he may give us a true work
of art. At present he hardly realises that an artist should be
articulate.

Seymour's Inheritance is a short novel in blank verse. On the whole, it
is very harmless both in manner and matter, but we must protest against
such lines as

And in the windows of his heart the blinds
Of happiness had been drawn down by Grief,

for a simile committing suicide is always a depressing spectacle. Some
of the other poems are so simple and modest that we hope Mr. Ross will
not carry out his threat of issuing a 'more pretentious volume.'
Pretentious volumes of poetry are very common and very worthless.

Mr. Brodie's Lyrics of the Sea are spirited and manly, and show a certain
freedom of rhythmical movement, pleasant in days of wooden verse. He is
at his best, however, in his sonnets. Their architecture is not always
of the finest order but, here and there, one meets with lines that are
graceful and felicitous.

Like silver swallows on a summer morn
Cutting the air with momentary wings,

is pretty, and on flowers Mr. Brodie writes quite charmingly. The only
thoroughly bad piece in the book is The Workman's Song. Nothing can be
said in favour of

Is there a bit of blue, boys?
Is there a bit of blue?
In heaven's leaden hue, boys?
'Tis hope's eye peeping through . . .

for optimism of this kind is far more dispiriting than Schopenhauer or
Hartmann at their worst, nor are there really any grounds for supposing
that the British workman enjoys third-rate poetry.

(1) The Discovery and Other Poems. By Glenessa. (National Publishing
Co.)

(2) Vortigern and Rowena: A Dramatic Cantata. By Edwin Ellis Griffin.
(Hutchings and Crowsley.)

(3) The Poems of Madame de la Mothe Guyon. Edited and arranged by the
Rev. A. Saunders Dyer, M.A. (Bryce and Son.)

(4) Stanzas and Sonnets. By J. Pierce, M.A. (Longmans, Green and Co.)

(5) In Hours of Leisure. By Clifford Harrison. (Kegan Paul.)

(6) AEonial. By the Author of The White Africans. (Elliot Stock.)

(7) Seymour's Inheritance. By James Ross. (Arrowsmith.)

(8) Lyrics of the Sea. By E. H. Brodie. (Bell and Sons.)

MR. PATER'S IMAGINARY PORTRAITS

(Pall Mall Gazette, June 11, 1887.)

To convey ideas through the medium of images has always been the aim of
those who are artists as well as thinkers in literature, and it is to a
desire to give a sensuous environme