Irish people. There
are others who will remember that Ireland has extended her boundaries,
and that we have now to reckon with her not merely in the Old World but
in the New.

The Two Chiefs of Dunboy: or An Irish Romance of the Last Century. By J.
A. Froude. (Longmans, Green and Co.)

SOME LITERARY NOTES--V

(Woman's World, May 1889.)

Miss Caroline Fitz Gerald's volume of poems, Venetia Victrix, is
dedicated to Mr. Robert Browning, and in the poem that gives its title to
the book it is not difficult to see traces of Mr. Browning's influence.
Venetia Victrix is a powerful psychological study of a man's soul, a
vivid presentation of a terrible, fiery-coloured moment in a marred and
incomplete life. It is sometimes complex and intricate in expression,
but then the subject itself is intricate and complex. Plastic simplicity
of outline may render for us the visible aspect of life; it is different
when we come to deal with those secrets which self-consciousness alone
contains, and which self-consciousness itself can but half reveal. Action
takes place in the sunlight, but the soul works in the dark.

There is something curiously interesting in the marked tendency of modern
poetry to become obscure. Many critics, writing with their eyes fixed on
the masterpieces of past literature, have ascribed this tendency to
wilfulness and to affectation. Its origin is rather to be found in the
complexity of the new problems, and in the fact that self-consciousness
is not yet adequate to explain the contents of the Ego. In Mr.
Browning's poems, as in life itself which has suggested, or rather
necessitated, the new method, thought seems to proceed not on logical
lines, but on lines of passion. The unity of the individual is being
expressed through its inconsistencies and its contradictions. In a
strange twilight man is seeking for himself, and when he has found his
own image, he cannot understand it. Objective forms of art, such as
sculpture and the drama, sufficed one for the perfect presentation of
life; they can no longer so suffice.

The central motive of Miss Caroline Fitz Gerald's psychological poem is
the study of a man who to do a noble action wrecks his own soul, sells it
to evil, and to the spirit of evil. Many martyrs have for a great cause
sacrificed their physical life; the sacrifice of the spiritual life has a
more poignant and a more tragic note. The story is supposed to be told
by a French doct