."

The force of the "harp" suggestion is plain, and it is good, but why "a
harp _with wires_?" The other small matter is amusing. The piece in
praise of England (p. 76), reproduced from "Faithful for Ever," is dated
1856, and this is the only date given in the volume. What does it mean?
We conjecture that Mr. Patmore has an almost savage wish to make it
clear that since what he has elsewhere called "the year of the great
crime, when the false English nobles, with their Jew, slew their trust,"
he thinks this beautiful description has become inapplicable to his
country:--

"Remnant of Honour, brooding in the dark,
Over your bitter cark,
Staring, as Rizpah stared, astonied seven days,
Upon the corpses of so many sons
Who loved her once,
_Dead in the dim and lion-haunted ways_,
Who could have dreamt
That times should come like these?"

Those are a few of the bitter lines about England which abound in "The
Unknown Eros, and other Odes."

* * * * *

Among books to possess--books to be bought, begged, or stolen, pleasant
to look at, pleasant to dip into, and useful to refer to, we give a
place in the front rank to _Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect_,
by William Barnes (C. Kegan Paul & Co.), and nobody will dispute this
award. Many of these poems are familiar upon the tongue, or laid up
silent-sweet in the memory of hundreds of world-weary Cockneys, who
never set eyes on a Dorset vale, and probably never will. Mr. Barnes
writes a modest and characteristic preface explaining that two of these
three Collections of rural poems had long been out of print (we are glad
to hear it), and also calling attention to the glossary at the end of
the volume, "with some hints on Dorset word-shapes." Mr. Barnes is past
reviewing, and we will only add that this complete collection (467
pages) forms a handsome and well-printed volume, and is altogether a
thing to be delightedly thankful for.

* * * * *

Titles often prove misleading things, and it is not often that the
outside of any book gives the faintest hint of its quality, unless it
tells you, or nearly tells you, the publisher's name, for of course
there are publishers who very rarely issue bad, or even weak books.
_Memories: a Life's Epilogue. New Edition. With a Lament for Princess
Alice._ This is so very unpromising a title-page that if it had not been
for the names, Longmans, Green & Co. a