Now, after such a bird's eye view of these forms of the eighteenth century verse (massing together for the nonce sonnet, song, and idyl), return to Mr. Gosse's dictum and apply it severally to the different orders of composition. Where, one is inclined to ask, is the boasted progress? where is the foundation of the style of the nineteenth century? To have three distinct modes of poetic expression virtually disappear, or shown only to be ill-considered and ill-practiced, will seem to some students to be a very dubious improvement. For con sidering minor lyricism and sonneteering apart, and with it tragedy and the idyl, in what respects, it may be asked, do any of them, as represented in that age, form "a basis for the style upon which all recent literature has been elevated?" The historical facts are plain and clear. The sonnets of Wordsworth, Hartley Coleridge, Keats, Rossetti, owe absolutely nothing to the eighteenth century, for it had no sonnet literature. The imaginative drama of Byron, Browning, and Tennyson, has its stylistic like its spiritual similitude, not in Rowe and Savage, but in the great Elizabethan models. As for the lyrical movement of the opening era, the exquisite outpouring of Burns and Shelley, and the song-craft of the Victorian era, it seems as far as possible removed, both in temper and versification, from the lifeless copies and meagre artificialities of Prior and Goldsmith. And lastly the idyls of Tennyson are in no whit nearer the jaded and satire-inspired pastorals of the extreme Popeans. With all these qualifications and objections it is nevertheless possible to acquiesce in the main plea of this brilliant writer, that in many respects the eighteenth century was a necessary stage in the reconstruction of stylistic standards in English poetry. But Mr. Gosse's whole book is aimed at the change in form between Shakspeare and Pope, to the almost complete neglect of the corresponding changes of poetic temper and feeling. This concentration on a single point makes the strength of his position, but it constitutes also its weakness. It springs from the deplorable mistake of regarding poetry as exclusively a formal art, and treating it entirely from an artistic or technical, as opposed to a philosophical standpoint. It is a decided coigne of vantage for technical criticism, but it ignores the historic method, and is by just so much narrow and circumscribed in its views. To separate from the matter changes of structure from changes of sentiment, is to disregard the national life of which the art of every period is only the incomplete reflection, and to lose hold of "the ethical and essential character" of its poetry. Yet it is precisely this character that is of an importance equal, at the very least, to form. "We must consider the ethical and essential character of classical poetry," says an Academy reviewer, "if we are to comprehend aright the rise of the classical form." Any other procedure, certainly, would scarcely conduct us to an adequate comprehension. Are we to appraise poetry by its mechanism alone? Is execution, finish, bookcraft to be the final test in the rating of its excellences? Take the style of the mundane rhetorical poetry of the eighteenth century at its best, applaud the sonorousness of Dryden, the grace and symmetry of Pope, what did so perfect an instrument accomplish towards the creation of a great and free poetry? To what ideals was it attuned? What did this new and exquisite gift of form express in the way of emotion and thought? I border perhaps on a worn topic, one beaten out to thinness by the critics of preceding generations, but utterances like these of Frederick Harrison and Mr. Gosse are stimulating. They send us back in search of our old impressions, which almost vanish away under the touch of their transforming rods, to test them by these latter day standards, to revive them, if necessary, at any rate to discover some point de repère from which to proceed again with safety. L. J. SWINBURNE. RECENT PUBLICATIONS. G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York. Told at Tuxedo. By A. M. Emory. 145 pp. The Federal Constitution - An Essay. By John F. Baker, LL.D. 126 pp. 103 pp. Edited by J. T. I. 316 pp. Henry Holt & Co., New York. Sketch of the History of Yale University. By Franklin Bowditch Dexter, M.A. 108 pp. Funk & Wagnalls. A day in Capernaum. By Dr. Franz Delitzsch-Translated by Rev. George H. Schodde. 166 pp. Environment. A Story of Modern Society. By Florine Thayer McCray. 404 pp. Saratoga Chips and Carlsbad Wafers. By Nathan Shepard. 244 pp. Illustrated. Methods of Church Work. Religious, social, and financial. By Rev. Sylvanus Stall, A.M. 304 pp. The Life of Rev. George C. Haddock. By Frank C. Haddock. 541 pp. Hints on Early Education and Nursery Discipline. 97 pp. The Captain of the Janizaries. A Story of the times of Scanderbeg and the Fall of Constantinople. By James M. Ludlow. 404 pp. Thirty Thousand Thoughts. Being extracts covering a comprehensive circle of Religious and Allied topics. Edited by the Rev. H. D. M. Spencer, M.A., Rev. Joseph S. Exell, M.A., Rev. Charles Neil, M.A. 509 pp. Harper & Brothers. Outlines of International Law. With an account of its origin and sources and of its historical development. By George B. Davis, U. S. A. 469 pp. T & T Clark, Edinburgh. Clark's Foreign Theological Library, New Series Vol. XXX. Paul's first Epistle to the Corinthians. Vol. II. 493 pp. Chautauqua Press, Boston. Godet on St. A Memoir of Roger Ascham. By Samuel Johnson, LL.D. With an introduction by James H. Carlisle. 252 pp. Oliver Goldsmith. A selection from his Works, with an Introduction. By E. E. Hale. 287 pp. Lee & Shepard, Boston. Drones Honey. By Sophie May. 281 pp. The Obelisk and its voices, or The Inner facings of the Washington Monument. By Harry B. Carrington, U. S. A. Houghton, Mifflin & Co. A Treatise on the Law of Divorce. By A. Parlett Lloyd. 323 pp. MacMillan & Co. Man's Knowledge of Man and of God. Six Discourses. By Richard Travers Smith, D.D. 256 pp. American Tract Society, New York. Universal Beliefs, or The Great Consensus. By Rev. E. F. Burr, D.D. 312 pp. J. B. Lippincott Co. Preliminary Report of the Commission appointed by the University of Pennsylvania, to investigate Modern Spiritualism, in accordance with the request of the late Henry Seybert. 159 pp. Ivison, Blakeman & Co. Captain Glaziar and his Lake. Dodd, Mead & Co. The Fisheries Dispute, a letter to the Hon. Wm. M. Evarts. By John Jay. History of Mount Holyoke Seminary, South Hadley, Mass. During its first half century, 1837-1887. By Mrs. Sarah D. (Locke) Stow. 372 pp. Colleges North and Colleges South. An Address by Julius D. Dreher, Pres. of Roanoke College. Diptheria a Filth Disease. By N. E. Wordin, A. M., M.D. Some Considerations concerning Cancer of the Uterus. Especially its Palliative Treatment in its later Stages. Land Shells of the Hawaiian Islands. D. D. Baldwin. Socialism and the Church, or Henry George vs. Archbishop Corrigan. By Rev. Willibald Hackner. ARTICLE I-SOME RECENT BOOKS ON FOLK LORE. IN the old Greek Readers of fifty years or more ago-like the Græca Minora, Jacob's, Owen's, or Colton's-whose agreeable variety of fables, jests, dialogues, and spirited selections from writers of higher grade has with doubtful wisdom been made to give place to a regular amount of Anabasis, in those old reminders of the past, now chiefly to be found on the top shelves of ministers' libraries or in some literary junk shop, often some of the most interesting pages were filled with the Asteia or jests of Hierocles. Little or nothing could be learned by the curious reader about this Hierocles. It is probably a mere name, and very likely a name having no original connection with the jests. One who did not as a child read this or some other ancient jest book can hardly appreciate the mingled curiosity, surprise, and wonder of a thoughtful boy in puzzling out of Greek, that most serious and venerable tongue, the story he had heard told but yesterday of old Mr. So-and-So, of his playmate's mother, who forbade |