ere a richer offering laid on the
shrine of the goddess _Stultia_ than the tale of Sir Hubert, with which
the volume concludes. But our business at present is with "The River."

The common practice of writers who deal with stories of love, whose
"course never did run smooth," is to make their heroes commit suicide,
on finding that the ladies whom they had wooed in vain were married to
other people. But in the poem before us, Mr Patmore improves upon this
method; he drowns his lover, Witchaire, because the lady, whom he had
never wooed at all, does not marry him, but gives her hand (why should
she not?) to the man who sues for it. Did Witchaire expect that the lady
was to propose to him? The poem opens with some very babyish verses
descriptive of an "old manor hall":--

"Its huge fantastic weather-vanes
_Look happy_ in the light;
Its warm face through the foliage gleams,
A _comfortable_ sight."

And so on, until we are introduced to the lady of the establishment:--

"That lady loves the pale Witchaire,
_Who loves too much to sue_:
He came this morning hurriedly,
Then out her young blood flew;
But he talk'd of common things, _and so_
Her eyes are steep'd in dew."

The lady, finding that her lover continues to hang back, dries her
tears, and very properly gets married to another man. During the
celebration of the ceremony, the poet recurs to his hero, who has taken
up his position in the park--

"Leaning against an aged tree,
By thunder stricken bare.

"The moonshine shineth in his eye,
From which no tear doth fall,
Full of vacuity as death,
Its slaty parched ball
Fixedly, though expressionless,
Gleams on the distant hall."

Witchaire then goes and drowns himself, in a river which "runneth round"
the lady's property--a dreadful warning to all young lovers "who love
too much to sue."

On a fine day in the following summer, the poet brings the lady to the
banks of this river. His evident intention is, to raise in the reader's
mind the expectation that she shall discover her lover's body, or some
other circumstance indicative of the fatal catastrophe. This
expectation, however, he disappoints. The only remarkable occurrence
which takes place is, that the lady does _not_ find the corpse, nor does
any evidence transpire which can lead her to suppose that the suicide
had ever been committed; and with this senseless and inco