Aubrey de Vere in America.

The second moment of the creative act is concurrence. Finite substance is a being in the way of development; a being capable of modification. Now, no being can modify itself, can produce a modification of which it is itself the subject, without the aid of another being who is pure actuality. Therefore, finite substances cannot modify themselves without the aid of God. The action of God aiding finite substances to develop themselves, is called concurrence. We have already proved, in the second article, the principle upon which this moment of the action of God is founded. We shall here add another argument. A finite substance is a being in the way of development; a being in potency of modification; and when the modification takes place, it passes from the power or potency to the act. Now, no being can pass from the power to the act except by the aid of being already in act. Consequently, finite substances cannot modify themselves except by the aid of being already in act. Nor can it be supposed that finite substances can be at the same time in potency and in act with regard to the same modification; for this would be a contradiction in terms. It follows, then, that having power of being modified, they cannot pass from the power to the movement without the help of another being already in act. This cannot be a being which may itself be in power and in act, for then it would itself require aid. It follows, therefore, that this being, aiding finite substances to modify themselves, must be one which is pure actuality, that is, God.

Third corollary: From all we have said follows, also, the possibility of God acting upon his creatures by a new moment of his action, and putting in them new forces higher than those forces which naturally spring from their essence, nor due to them either as natural properties, attributes or faculties. For, if God can act outside himself, and effect finite substances distinct from him; substances endowed with all the essential attributes and faculties springing from their nature; if he can continue to maintain them in existence, and aid them in their natural development, we see no contradiction in supposing that he may, if he choose, grant his creatures other forces superior altogether to their natural forces, and, consequently, not due to them as properties or attributes of their nature.

For the contradiction could not exist either on the part of God or on the part of the creature. Not in the former, because God's action being infinite, may give rise to an infinity of effects, one higher and more sublime, in the hierarchy of beings, than the other. Not in the latter, because the capacity of the creature is indefinite. It may receive an indefinite growth and development, and never reach a point beyond which it could not go. Therefore, the supposition we have made does not imply any repugnance either in God or in the finite, the two terms of the question. Now, that which involves no repugnance is possible. It is possible, therefore, that God may act upon his creatures by a moment of his action distinct from the creative moment, and put in them forces higher than their natural forces, and not due to them as any essential element or faculty.

The other questions in the next article.

[Footnote 58]

[Footnote 58:Irish Odes and Other Poems.By Aubrey De Vere.New York: The Catholic Publication Society,126 Nassau street. 1869.]

The first if not the strongest attraction this book will have for American curiosity is not in its contents, but in their selection. The poems presented are culled from a much greater number, especially and expressly for the American market, and the choice interests us vividly as indicating an English author's deliberatebusinessopinion of that market. This edition has not been prepared without thought: Mr. De Vere does not often do anything without thought. Moreover, it has been, if we are not misinformed, somewhat unusually long in press, and several of the poems already published have been actually revised and improved on by their painstaking author to the very last copy, and differ in quite a number of minutiae from their former selves. Hence Americans must be all the more surprised at the singular estimate of taste and the singular conception of their character, which appear to underlie this book. We cannot help thinking—nay, we cannot help seeing—that Mr. De Vere has not selected so well as he would have done if he had ever lived in America, or, if he had had intelligent, practical, and experienced American advice. There was only one way to do this thing rightly. It was to consider either what we, the Americans, ought to like the best, or what we would like the best; to weigh the facts well, to settle on some definite plan or theory of selection, and carry this out with some little sternness to the end, only leaving the path for the very choicest flowers. We cannot trace any strictness of system in this book: it has neither spinal column nor spinal cord, but is made up of miscellaneous samples—disjecta membra poetae. Sometimes we imagine it to be a compromise of plans, and sometimes a random jumble. Too many of the best poems we miss, and some of the author's most takinglinesof thought stated nearly, and some totally unrepresented. On the other hand, some mediocre pieces abound as to which we seek but cannot find an extrinsic cause for their reproduction. Our own suggestion to Mr. De Vere would have been to makegeneral interesthis prime criterion in choosing. We are a very heterogeneous nation, and it is not every topic that can unite our various tastes. For any wide or national success here, a book must have at least a kernel of thought or sentiment which shall appeal directly to almost the only thing we have in common here—our humanity. Next to such poems—and Mr. De Vere has written not a few—we should have taken the best expressed; the boldest or most beautiful. This indeed is but a branch corollary of the other principle, because we all love fine expressions of ideas. On these two principles we think we could have made up from the copies of Mr. De Vere's poetry one of the most attractive books of the year. We think he has missed this in several ways. To begin with, we cannot see anywhere that he ever once grasped the idea of addressing himself to the whole American people. There is pabulum enough for Boston, and for devout Catholics everywhere; but where is the intelligence of Georgia, or California, or Ohio in his estimates for the popularity of this volume?Some of the poems err in the direction of abstruseness, many in being founded on obscure facts; a few embody the gross fault of being occasional pieces—the flattest and most surely flat of all possible forms of dulness. That Mr. De Vere could forget himself to this last degree is to us proof positive that he never thought of pleasing the whole American reading community.

We have heard this praised as sagacity, since this work's appearance, on the ground that, as an outspoken Catholic and Irishman, he could never have succeeded. To this the American observer says, "Distinguo." Mr. De Vere is too elevated and refined a thinker to be a poet of the people anywhere; but it is, if anything, his religion, not his Celtic outbursts, that stand in his way here. We are—heaven knows with good reason—tolerably well past literary prejudices against foreigners. A foreign author, having no friends nor enemies, no clique nor counter-clique among the critics here, will have a fair trial by American public opinion always, on the one condition that he do not stand upon his being a foreigner and insist on cramming pet theories down our throats.

But we do question whether there may not be a measure of truth in the suggestion that Mr. De Vere, here as everywhere, is too conspicuously Catholic for popularity. We see little of sectarian prejudice among our best non-Catholic men; perhaps because so many of them are freethinkers or indifferentists in religion. But Protestant prejudice controls some otherwise first-class criticism, much more of lower grade, and very many ordinary readers and buyers of books. Perhaps Mr. De Vere is too pronounced for these—too full and too proud of his faith. Many a bigoted Protestant who can just barely make up his mind to hear a man out in spite of his being a "Romish idolater," etc., etc., lays down a book the instant he suspects—what Protestantism is always peculiarly quick to suspect—propagandism. Such men might know that if proselyte-making were Mr. De Vere's aim, his obviously shrewder plan would have been, first to gain influence and popularity by neutral poems, and then, entrenched on the vantage-ground of public favor, to bombard the community with his explosive Catholic notions to some purpose. But this would be far too much thinking for a bigoted man to go to the trouble of, especially when it is so much cheaper, as well as more sweet to the deacons and elders, to be unjust and slurring. So we fear that many Protestant organs of opinion will reject the poetry for the religion, and so do Mr. De Vere's book harm as an American venture so far as the non-Catholics are concerned.

On the other hand we do believe that his Irish pieces would be his best hold on public favor; for he certainly is one of the best-informed men in Irish history of all the late writers; and if there is one thing an American admires more than another—in literature or anything else—it is a man that knows what he is talking about.

But this is all of the dead past now; the book is upon us. We go on to this question—since Mr. De Vere did not aim to please us all, what was his aim? He has not told us in the natural place—the preface—and we can only ask the reader to decide for himself whether it is, as we said, compromise or jumble. The selection of the Irish pieces is infinitely the worst of all. The best, because the most truly Irish, of these, are in Inisfail.There are very many Irishmen indeed who would not appreciate the sonnet to Sarsfield and Clare, and who could make neither head nor tail of "The Building of the Cottage;" but take up Inisfail and read out "The Malison," or "The Bier that Conquered," or the "Dirge of Rory O'More," to any Irish audience, and see if they understand it or not!

There lay one main element of strength of a book like this; and yet we do not recall a single piece from "Inisfail" in the entire collection! It is inconceivable to us except upon the very well-known and extremely ill-understood principle that an author always differs with his readers, and generally with posterity, as to what is his best. In our own humble opinion, for instance, "The Bard Ethell" or "The Phantom Funeral," as historical pictures, or the "Parvuli Ejus" or "Semper Eadem" as pure poetry, is singly worth the whole fifty pages of Irish Odes, sonnets, and interludes that begin this new volume: and we doubt as little that Mr. De Vere would smile in benign derision at our notion. So we will not dispute about tastes, and simply say that we do not understand the classification of the main body of the Irish pieces. Especially is this hard to discover the reason for omitting Inisfail in the light of the following passage from the preface: "I cannot but wish that my poetry, much of which illustrates their history and religion, should reach those Irish 'of the dispersion,' in that land which has extended to them its hospitality. Whoever loves that people must follow it in its wanderings with an earnest desire that it may retain with vigilant fidelity, and be valued for retaining, those among its characteristics which most belong to the Ireland of history and religion."

The remainder of the selected poems are purely miscellaneous, and are chiefly remarkable to us as again showing how curiously authors estimate themselves. We do indeed meet with much of the best there is; but we miss, as we have said, very much more. And having, as we have, a personal intimacy with many of Mr. De Vere's poems, we feel really resentful to see our favorites slighted and supplanted by others which—as it seems to us, be it remembered—no one could ever like half so well.

After all, Mr. De Vere may be right and we wrong; but we feel so interested in his success, and so earnestly desirous of recognition for his high abilities, that—we do wish he had done it our way!

The first sixty pages of the present volume are composed mainly of a sort of rosary of ten odes, all strung on Ireland and the Irish. Now, odes we disbelieve in generally. We think they contain more commonplace which we imagine we admire, and which we don't and can't admire, than any other variety of composition in English literature. They are the supremely fit form of a few peculiar orders of thought. The cause of Ireland is not one of these, and Mr. De Vere has tried hard and failed, to prove the contrary. Irish griefs are too human, Irish sympathies too heartfelt, to be reached by this road in the clouds. One good ballad or slogan is worth practically a million odes. As Ode I. in this very series beautifully puts it,

"Like severed locks that keep their light,When all the stately frame is dust,A nation's songs preserve from blightA nation's name, their sacred trust.Temple and pyramid eterneMay memorize her deeds of power;But only from her songs we learnHow throbbed her life-blood hour by hour."

But, waiving their final cause, three of the odes are good, the first two, and the seventh—the best of all—which, as also the ninth, is republished from the book of 1861. The close of this is singularly touching and true, and well worth recalling even to many who must have admired it before.

"I come, the breath of sighs to breathe,Yet add not unto sighing;To kneel on graves, yet drop no wreathOn those in darkness lying.Sleep, chaste and true, a little while,The Saviour's flock and Mary's,And guard their reliques well, O Isle,Thou chief of reliquaries!"Blessed are they that claim no partIn this world's pomp and laughter:Blessèd the pure; the meek of heartBlest here; more blest hereafter.'Blessed the mourners.' Earthly goodsAre woes, the master preaches:Embrace thy sad beatitudes,And recognize thy riches!"And if, of every land the guest,Thine exile back returningFinds still one land unlike the rest,Discrowned, disgraced, and mourning,Give thanks! Thy flowers, to yonder skiesTransferred, pure airs are tasting;And, stone by stone, thy temples riseIn regions everlasting.""Sleep well, unsung by idle rhymes,Ye sufferers late and lowly;Ye saints and seers of earlier times,Sleep well in cloisters holy!Above your bed the bramble bends,The yew tree and the alder:Sleep well, O fathers and O friends!And in your silence moulder!"

Scattered about between these odes we find a miscellany of minor pieces whose function seems to be that of interludes or thin partitions. Of thesehors-d'oeuvressome are new, some old; the majority, for Mr. De Vere, commonplace. He cannot write a page without hitting on some happy phrase or just thought, but there is a little more than this to be said of almost all. The best is this sonnet which we do not remember having seen before:

"The Ecclesiastical Titles Act."The statesmen of this day I deem a tribeThat dwarf-like strut, a pageant on a stageTheirs but in pomp and outward equipage.Ruled inly by the herd, or hireling scribe.They have this skill, the dreaded Power to bribe:This courage, war upon the weak to wage:To turn from self a Nation's ignorant rage:To unstaunch old wounds with edict or with jibe.Ireland! the unwise one saw thee in the dust,Crowned with eclipse, and garmented with night,And in his heart he said,'For her no day!'But thou long since hadst placed in God thy trust,And knew'st that in the under-world, all light,Thy sun moved eastward. Watch! that East grows gray!"

We have also a long series of selections from the entire body of our author's published works. Here we are glad to welcome to America many of his best poems. The sonnets especially are as a rule well chosen. We miss many a lovely one, but we should miss these that are before us just as much. Mr. De Vere has also with excellent judgment honored with a place in this book his three charming idylls, "Glaucè," "Ione" and "Lycius"—among his very finest pieces of word-painting, and which have more of the old classic mode of expression than any modern poems in our language save Landor's, and perhaps Tennyson's "OEnone." We wonder, by the way, why a man who could write these idylls has never given us any classical translations. We are sure they would be remarkably good. The long poem of "The Sisters" is also reprinted in full. It is good, and we will not say that it is not a good piece here; but on reading it over, the discussion and description which frame the picture seem to us better than the picture itself. Indeed, we have begun to suspect more and more that Mr. De Vere's strength lies in his descriptive powers. It might surprise many other readers of his, as much as it did us, to examine for themselves and discover how many of their most admired passages are portraits. In mere verbal landscape-painting he stands very high. His very earliest books abound in felicities of this sort, and theMay Carolsare fairly replete with them, and in fact contain a whole little picture gallery in verse.And from the "Autumnal Ode—one of the very latest in his latest book [Footnote 59] —we select one of many passages which amply prove that Mr. De Vere's hand has not forgotten her cunning:

No more from full-leaved woods that music swellsWhich in the summer filled the satiate ear:A fostering sweetness still from bosky dellsMurmurs; but I can hearA harsher sound when down, at intervals,The dry leaf rattling falls.Dark as those spots which herald swift disease,The death-blot marks for death the leaf yet firm.Beside the leaf down-trodden trails the worm.In forest depths the haggard, whitening grassRepines at youth departed. Half-stripped treesReveal, as one who says,'Thou too must pass,'Plainlier each day their quaint anatomies.Yon poplar grove is troubled! Bright and boldBabbled his cold leaves in the July breezeAs though above our heads a runnel rolled.His mirth is o'er; subdued by old October,He counts his lessening wealth, and, sadly sober,Tinkles his minute tablets of wan gold."

[Footnote 59: Dated in October, 1867.]

This is very vivid, and the closing fancy extremely graceful and pleasing. Poplars, by the way, seem to be a favorite theme of our author. Every one familiar with his poems will recall another beautiful description in his idyll of "Glaucè," in which occur these lines:

"How indolentlyThe tops of those pale poplars bend and swayOver the violet-braided river brim."

And there are other instances also.

But it is waste of argument to go on giving illustrations of Mr. De Vere's power to depict the external world; it is like proving Anacreon a love-poet. What we wish to call attention to is the nature, not the existence, of his talent for description. It seems to us that, throughout his works, the faculty of delineation is not the ordinary sensuous susceptibility of poets, but rather a clear, tender truthfulness in reproducing impressions alike of thought and sense. The somewhat unusual result from which we deduce this opinion is, that he describes quite as happily in the moral order as the physical. This has not been adequately noticed by his critics, His beautifulgenrepictures appear to have absorbed almost all of the public attention. We think this is more than their due. Indeed, whenever he sets out to paint traits, Mr. De Vere is quite as sure to make a hit as in his landscape sketches. This volume chances to afford us one striking set of examples of this. There are in it three several summaries of the characteristics of different nations. One—the remarkable epitome of England in the sonnets on colonization—has been published in this magazine before, (Vol. iv. No. 19, p. 77.) The next we take from the "Farewell to Naples," (p. 70.) We think it will bear quoting, though it has been in print since 1855, and was written as long ago as 1844.

'From her whom genius never yet inspired,Nor virtue raised, nor pulse heroic fired;From her who, in the grand historic page,Maintains one barren blank from age to age;From her, with insect life and insect buzz,Who, evermore unresting, nothing does;From her who, with the future and the pastNo commerce holds, no structure rears to last;From streets where spies and jesters, side by side,Range the rank markets, and their gains divide;Where faith in art, and art in sense is lost,And toys and gewgaws form a nation's boast;Where Passion, from Affection's bond cut loose,Revels in orgies of its own abuse;And Appetite, from Passion's portals thrust,Creeps on its belly to its grave in dust;Where Vice her mask disdains, where Fraud is loud,And naught but Wisdom dumb and Justice cowed;Lastly, from her who, planted here unawed,'Mid heaven-topped hills, and waters bright and broad,From these but nerves more swift to err hath gained,And the dread stamp of sanctities profaned,And gilt not less with ruin, lives to showThat worse than wasted weal is wasted woe—We part, forth issuing through her closing gateWith unreverting faces not ingrate."

Is this not stingingly true? If only the critics found it in Byron, would it not be inevitable in all the select readers and speakers, and rampant in the "Notes on France," "Letters from Italy," "Thoughts while Abroad," etc., which ministers are so sure to write, and which we hope congregations buy?

The other is a still stronger, and, coming from Mr. De Vere, a very bold as well as trenchant portraiture—no less than the English idea of Ireland. True, Mr. De Vere does not even pretend to agree with it, but that, an Irishman himself, and a devoted patriot, he can see her so exactly as others see her, makes it wonderfully good, and raises what would otherwise have been a mere success of exact expression, to the rank of a high imaginative effort.

"How strange a race, more apt to fly than walk;Soaring yet slight; missing the good things round them,Yet ever out of ashes raking gems;In instincts loyal, yet respecting lawFar less than usage: changeful yet unchanged:Timid yet enterprising: frank yet secret:Untruthful oft in speech, yet living truth,And truth in things divine to life preferring:Scarce men; yet possible angels!—'Isle of Saints!'Such doubtless was your land—again it might be—Strong, prosperous, manly never! ye are GreeksIn intellect, and Hebrews in the soul:The solid Roman heart, the corporate strengthIs England's dower!"

We cannot devise an addition that could complete this picture of the Sassenach's view of the Gael. It is to the life—the "absolute exemplar of the time." Only we fear that Mr. De Vere has furnished those who do not particularly love his country with rather an ugly citation against her, and Irishmen may perhaps complain of him for giving to such a powerful delineation the sanction of an Irish name. If so, it will be the highest compliment in the world; yet it has ever been a dangerous gift to be able to see both sides of the shield.

We have only suggested our belief, not asserted it as a fact, that Mr. De Vere's fullest power is in description; but the idea grows on us every year, and we wish he would set the question finally at rest in some future work. Let him for once in his life make this great gift of his the essential, instead of the incident, and write something purely descriptive.

There is another thing—rather a curious thing, perhaps—that we note in the choice of the old poems. In a former review, some little time since, we took occasion to speak of the chameleon-like way in which Mr. De Vere's style—always in its essence his own—unconsciously reflects his reading of certain of our best authors. There are poems that recall Shakespeare, and Wordsworth, and Landor, and Tennyson, and Shelley. But there are also others—many of them among his best—which are all himself. Consciously or unconsciously, Mr. De Vere has come back to these at the last, and they constitute a notable majority of those he has picked out for this volume. The ode on the ascent of the Apennines, the "Wanderer's Musings at Rome," the "Lines written under Delphi," the beautiful "Year of Sorrow," "The Irish Gael (aliasIrish Celt) to the Irish Norman"—all these are of this class. Perhaps the poet has come to love the best those of his poems which hold the purest solution of his own nature, or perhaps it may be mere chance; only certain it is that the most characteristic of his pieces predominate very largely throughout.

We cannot, however, pass on to the new poems without expressing our profound disrespect for one selection in this volume. It is notorious that, as we hinted before, authors are poor judges of the relative excellence of their own works. To this rule there are, apparently, no exceptions. Let us take one rankling example. No lover of Tennyson but groans inwardly with disgust over that insane hoot called "The Owl," with its noble description of the very witching hour of night:

"When cats run home, and night is come,"

and the impotent beauty of the poet's ejaculation:

"I would mock thy chant (!) anew,But I cannot mimic it.Not a whit of thy tuwhoo,Thee to woo to thy tuwhit," etc., etc.

—human nature can stand no more of it.

We had long loved to believe that this was a sceptred hermit of an example, wrapped in the solitude of its own unapproachable fatuity. It has gone blinking and tu-whooing through edition after edition, with the muffy solemnity characteristic of the eminent fowl, its subject. But Mr. De Vere has paralleled it at last with a certain "Song" which we find in this volume. On the 4th of September, 1843, in a preface to his first book of verses, [Footnote 60] he tells us that this poem was written considerably earlier than 1840.

[Footnote 60:The Search after Proserpine. Oxford and London. 1855.]

Three years ago, we remember observing and laughing at it, and thinking whether it would not be well to speak of it as the one blemish in all his works, on his elsewhere perfect grammar. Deeming it a mere Homeric dormitation, we passed it by. And now, after thirty years face to face with it, comes Mr. De Vere, at last, and drags from utter and most laudable oblivion this hapless

"SONG."He found me sitting among flowers,My mother's, and my own;Whiling away too happy hoursWith songs of doleful tone."My sister came, and laid her bookUpon my lap: and he,He too into the page would look,And asked no leave of me."The little frightened creature laidHer face upon my knee—'Youteach your sister, pretty maid;And I would fain teachthee.'"He taught me joy more blest, more briefThan that mild vernal weather:He taught me love; he taught me grief:He taught me both together."Give me a sun-warmed nook to cry in!And a wall-flower's perfume—A nook to cry in, and to die in,'Mid the ruin's gloom."

If Mr. De Vere had only attended in 1840 to the very reasonable request of the young person in the last verse, we should have been spared one of the very silliest little things in the English language. And yet in thus haling it from the

"nook to sigh in and to die in'Mid the ruin's gloom,"

where public opinion had long since left it in peace, he has done good. It is instructive to his admirers to see for themselves how very badly he could write before the year 1840. If intended as a public penance of this nature, it is perfect of its kind, and the humility of it will rejoice all Christian souls, excepting, perhaps, the indignant shade of Lindley Murray.

Not far behind this in inanity is the "Fall of Rora," all the good part of which was published years ago, and all the bad part of which is raked up and added for this edition. But from this to the end of the book are new poems of a very different order. To begin with, we have a number of miscellaneous sonnets. They are none of them poor, but the first that particularly arrests attention, by its fine harmony and happy illustration, is

"Kirkstall Abbey."Roll on by tower and arch, autumnal river;And ere about thy dusk yet gleaming tideThe phantom of dead Day hath ceased to glide,Whisper it to the reeds that round thee quiver:Yea, whisper to those ivy bowers that shiverHard by on gusty choir and cloister wide,My bubbles break: my weed-flowers seaward slide:My freshness and my mission last for ever!'Young moon from leaden tomb of cloud that soarest,And whitenest those hoar elm-trees, wrecks forlornOf olden Airedale's hermit-haunted forest,Speak thus,'I died; and lo, I am reborn!'Blind, patient pile, sleep on in radiance! TruthDies not: and faith, that died, shall rise in endless youth."

The arrangement of the double rhymes, which gives the peculiar, rich rhythm, is a very unusual one with these sonnets. In the whole two hundred and fifty before this, we only recall one or two other instances, notable among which is the famous one beginning,

"Flowers I would bring, if flowers could make thee fairer,"

and the effect is almost always excellent.

On the heels of this treads another (of the same rhythm also) too good to pass by:

"Unspiritual Civilization."We have been piping, Lord; we have been singing!Five hundred years have passed o'er lawn and leaMarked by the blowing bud and falling tree,While all the ways with melody were ringing:In tented lists, high-stationed and flower-flingingBeauty looked down on conquering chivalry;Science made wise the nations; Laws made free;Art, like an angel ever onward winging,Brightened the world. But O great Lord and Father!Have these, thy bounties, drawn to thee man's raceThat stood so far aloof? Have they not ratherHis soul subjected? with a blind embraceGulfed it in sense? Prime blessings changed to curseTwixt God and man can set God's universe."

Better, perhaps, than either of these, as combining the best qualities of both, is the one on

"Common Life."Onward between two mountain warders liesThe field that man must till. Upon the right,Church-thronged, with summit hid by its own height,Swells the wide range of the theologies:Upon the left the hills of science riseLustrous but cold: nor flower is there, nor blight:Between those ranges twain through shade and lightWinds the low vale wherein the meek and wiseRepose. The knowledge that excludes not doubtIs there; the arts that beautify man's life:There rings the choral psalm, the civic shout,The genial revel, and the manly strife:There by the bridal rose the cypress waves:And there the all-blest sunshine softest falls on graves."

This is, we think, one of the author's very best. It evolves a happy allegory very neatly with a happy description, to express a thought too large, it is true, for development in such brief space, but highly suggestive. The question, how far wisdom lies in action, may be raised in a sonnet, and remain unsettled by a thousand treatises.

Several versions from Petrarch's sonnets are admirable, and serve to confirm our already expressed opinion that Mr. De Vere could give us excellent translations.

Perhaps, however, readers of our author will be most interested by the following, which is in an altogether different vein from the general run of these sonnets, and indeed is perhaps rather a curious subject for a sonnet to be made about at all. Still there is no accounting for these poets. Here it is, with all its oddities upon its head:

"A Warning."Why, if he loves you, lady, doth he hideHis love? So humble is he that his heartExults not in some sense of new desertWith all thy grace and goodness at his side?Ah! trust not thou the love that hath no pride,The pride wherein compunction claims no part,The callous calm no doubts confuse or thwart,The untrembling hope, and joy unsanctified!He of your beauty prates without remorse;You dropped last night a lily; on the sodHe let it lie, and fade in nature's course;He looks not on the ground your feet have trod.He smiles but with the lips, your form in view;And he will kiss one day your lips—not you."

Where did our pious philosopher, of all men, learn to discourse thus sagely and plainly of the uncertainty of all things amorous? We think he makes a very good case, and only add our emphatic indorsement, if that can serve the young lady, and join in warning her to find a warmer lover, unless the untrembling and unsanctifled is very, very handsome, in which case we know better than to advise her at all.

The next particularly good piece is the opening one of a miscellany, and is called

"The World's Work."Where is the brightness now that longBrimmed saddest hearts with happy tears?It was not time that wrought the wrong:Thy three and twenty vanquished yearsCrouched reverent, round their spotless prize,Like lions awed that spare a saint;Forbore that face—a paradiseNo touch autumnal ere could taint."It was not sorrow. Prosperous loveHer amplest streams for thee poured forth,As when the spring in some rich groveWith blue-bells spreads a sky on earth.Subverted Virtue! They the mostLament, that seldom deign to sigh;O world! is this fair wreck thy boast?Is this thy triumph, vanity?"What power is that which, being nought,Can unmake stateliest works of God?What brainless thing can vanquish thought?What heartless, leave the heart a clod?The radiance quench, yet add the glare?Dry up the flood; make loud the shoal!And merciless in malice, spareThat mask, a face without a soul?"Ah! Parian brows that overshoneEyes bluer than Egean seas!One time God's glory wrote thereonGood-will's two gospels, love and peace.Ah! smile. Around those lips of hersThe lustre rippled and was still,As when a gold leaf falling stirsA moment's tremor on the rill!"

We wish to call attention here to the very curious image italicized in the second verse. Every one is struck by it at once; every one sees the great beauty of it at once: and yet the code of a narrow and merely rhetorical criticism would weed it out like a wildflower shyly intruding in "ordered gardens great." The simile is not at all a particularly happy one in relation to the preceding idea; it is well enough, but there have been apter similes, and there will be. And reducing it to fact, probably it is one of the most exaggerative images ever written. But yet it is beautiful—really beautiful, not a verbal juggle that entraps the imagination in fine words. The force lies in the bringing into juxtaposition in a new way those old emblems of beauty, flowers and sky, and the daring inaccuracy of it only adds a charm. It does a poetical thought sometimes no harm to be loose. Nature can do clear-cut work enough when she makes things for use; but all the visible loveliness of this world is in vague outlines, formless masses, incomplete curves. The law that softens the distant mountain-tops is the same that makes the beauty of these lines. Theirs is the rarer excellence that rises above rule. We notice it the more in Mr. De Vere that his strength lies generally in the other direction, of photographic exactness in reproduction. We like the very looseness of such expressions; they are like the flowing robes of beautiful women. The third verse also is excellent throughout, especially in the fine metaphor in the sixth line, and the intensity of "merciless in malice." This makes it so much the more provoking that the end is weak, insignificant, and abrupt, and in a vicious style that seems to be more and more the fashion of to-day. Still, there have been worse things; does not Horace end an ode with"Mercuriusque"?

The next short song, though nothing remarkable, perhaps, as pure poetry, we cite because it is so like the author—Aubrey De Vere all over, and the shortest epitome of his style we have yet seen in any of his works.

"A Song Of Age.I."Who mourns? Flow on, delicious breeze!Who mourns, though youth and strength go by?Fresh leaves invest the vernal trees,Fresh airs will drown my latest sigh.What am I but a part outwornOf earth's great whole that lifts more highA tempest-freshened brow each mornTo meet pure beams and azure sky?II."Thou world-renewing breath, sweep on,And waft earth's sweetness o'er the wave!That earth will circle round the sunWhen God takes back the life he gave!To each his turn! Even now I feelThe feet of children press my grave,And one deep whisper o'er it steal—The soul is His who died to save.'"

We like the honesty and earnestness of this none the worse for knowing that Mr. De Vere is no longer a young man. And yet does it not seem hard to realize that so good a writer has been before the public nearly thirty years, and seen a generation of flimsy reputations hide him from the eyes of the herd? We can only with difficulty realize, beside, that any one with so romantic and novel-like a name can ever be old. And will he ever be? Is it not true in a deeper and other sense, that whom the gods love die young?

The "Lines on Visiting a Haunt of Coleridge's" are not excelled by anything in all the volume, but hang so closely together, that, having to quote all or nothing, we are constrained by their length to pass on to an interpolated copy of verses by S. E. De Vere, which gives us a moment's pause. We do not know whether the unknown S. E. is a gentleman or lady; whether the mysterious initials stand for Saint Elmo or Selah Ebenezer, Sarolta Ermengarde or Sarah Elizabeth. But we do know that in this poem, "Charity," (p. 276,) is one passage of some beauty, as thus:

"O cruel mockery, to call that loveWhich the world's frown can wither! Hypocrite!False friend! Base selfish man! fearing to liftThy soilèd fellow from the dust!From theeThe love of friends, the sympathy of kindRecoil like broken waves from a bare cliff,Waves that from far seas come with noiseless stepSlow stealing to some lonely ocean isle;With what tumultuous joy and fearless trustThey fling themselves upon its blackened breastAnd wind their arms of foam around its feet,Seeking a home; but finding none, returnWith slow, sad ripple, and reproachful murmur!"

We find concluding the work a set of sonnets called "Urbs Roma," dedicated to the Count de Montalembert; all smooth, polished, elegant, and dim; with no salient beauties anywhere that distinguish one above another—golden means. The real climax of the volume is at the "Autumnal Ode." This is far the best of the new poems, and one of the best of any of its author's, new or old. In structure it bears a general resemblance to the rest of Mr. De Vere's longer odes; and the style is ripe, lofty, easy, and well-sustained. We have already given one citation from its rich stores, but there are two more especially worthy of attention. The first is a description like the one cited, and quite in Mr. De Vere's own vein.

"It is the autumnal epode of the year;The nymphs that urge the seasons on their round,They to whose green lap flies the startled deerWhen bays the far-off hound,They that drag April by the rain-bright hair,(Though sun showers daze her and the rude winds scare)O'er March's frosty bound,They whose warm and furtive hand unwoundThe cestus falls from May's new-wedded breast—Silent they stand beside dead Summer's bier,With folded palms, and faces to the west,And their loose tresses sweep the dewy ground."III."A sacred stillness hangs upon the air,A sacred clearness. Distant shapes draw nigh:Glistens yon elm-grove, to its heart laid bare,And all articulate in its symmetry,With here and there a branch that from on highFar flashes washed as in a watery gleam;Beyond, the glossy lake lies calm—a beamUpheaved, as if in sleep, from its slow central stream."

The images, and the way the allegory is sustained, are the beauty of the first stanza. The second is perhaps more artistic still. The adjective "sacred" is an artful and ingenious one. Without any apparent particular propriety in its places—a hundred other words might be effective as qualifications of "stillness" and "clearness"—yet, we find, on passing to the next thought, that it has had its result in preparing the mind for a more vivid and imaginative view of the whole scene. The remaining delineation is exact and cumulative, as our author's descriptions always are; and the closing lines are a singularly true and acute observation of an effect of light that very few would notice in the actual landscape, or will appreciate even now their attention is called to it. But people who are sensible enough tobasknow and then in the ripeness of an autumn day will feel an electric contact of recognition.

Perhaps we cannot do better than to close this rambling notice with the closing lines of this elegant and thoughtful poem:

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