turns to the poet's work with a new sense of joy and
wonder, and with something of eager and impassioned expectation. And
perhaps this might be roughly taken as the test or touchstone of the
finest criticism.

Finally, one cannot help noticing the delicate instinct that has gone to
fashion the brief epilogue that ends this delightful volume. The
difference between the classical and romantic spirits in art has often,
and with much over-emphasis, been discussed. But with what a light sure
touch does Mr. Pater write of it! How subtle and certain are his
distinctions! If imaginative prose be really the special art of this
century, Mr. Pater must rank amongst our century's most characteristic
artists. In certain things he stands almost alone. The age has produced
wonderful prose styles, turbid with individualism, and violent with
excess of rhetoric. But in Mr. Pater, as in Cardinal Newman, we find the
union of personality with perfection. He has no rival in his own sphere,
and he has escaped disciples. And this, not because he has not been
imitated, but because in art so fine as his there is something that, in
its essence, is inimitable.

Appreciations, with an Essay on Style. By Walter Pater, Fellow of
Brasenose College. (Macmillan and Co.)

PRIMAVERA

(Pall Mall Gazette, May 24, 1890.)

In the summer term Oxford teaches the exquisite art of idleness, one of
the most important things that any University can teach, and possibly as
the first-fruits of the dreaming in grey cloister and silent garden,
which either makes or mars a man, there has just appeared in that lovely
city a dainty and delightful volume of poems by four friends. These new
young singers are Mr. Laurence Binyon, who has just gained the Newdigate;
Mr. Manmohan Ghose, a young Indian of brilliant scholarship and high
literary attainments who gives some culture to Christ Church; Mr. Stephen
Phillips, whose recent performance of the Ghost in Hamlet at the Globe
Theatre was so admirable in its dignity and elocution; and Mr. Arthur
Cripps, of Trinity. Particular interest attaches naturally to Mr.
Ghose's work. Born in India, of purely Indian parentage, he has been
brought up entirely in England, and was educated at St. Paul's School,
and his verses show us how quick and subtle are the intellectual
sympathies of the Oriental mind, and suggest how close is the bond of
union that may some day bind India to us by other methods than those of