Then felt I like some watcher of the skies He star'd at the Pacific - and all his men -KEATS: On First Looking into Chapman's Homer. (b) "Full many a glorious morning have I seen The composition of a good sonnet is not an easy matter, and the attempt should perhaps be, as a rule, reserved for years of greater maturity than those of high school study. The ambitious pupil or the ambitious class should, however, be encouraged to make the attempt. That success is not beyond the reach of one or several is shown by a pleasing little volume of Lyrical Essays, composed by a group of students in the Hyde Park High School of Chicago, from which the following sonnet is taken : "The cows come loitering through the lane, And from the branches round about is heard, Within the cherished folds of her embrace 60. French Forms of Verse. If time allows, the class desires the pleasure, and more weighty matters of English instruction are not too pressing, a few entertaining days may be spent in the study of several of the old French forms of verse which have recently been naturalized, as it were, in English — the ballade, the rondeau, the triolet, etc. They are somewhat mechanical forms, intricate in their structure, having for the composer the attraction of a puzzle to be solved, but, at their best, full of the charm of cleverness, delicacy of feeling, and the ingenuity of art. Models will be found in the poems of Mr. Austin Dobson and Mr. Edmund Gosse, and detailed rules of construction in The Rhymester (Appleton & Co.). Harris, Uncle Remus, 74. Kipling, Jungle Book, 57; The Tomb Longfellow, H. W., Letter to his Longfellow, S., Life of H. W. Long- Library of the World's Best Litera- Matthews, Outlines in Local Color, Norton, Notes of Travel and Study Outlook, The, 104, 105. Poe, The Fall of the House of Usher, 77. Robertson, F. W., Lectures, 80. Scott, Ivanhoe, 76; 134. Harte, Bret, Snow-bound at Eagle's, Spenser, Faerie Queene, 133. 73. Steevens, In India, 60. Stevenson, Across the Plains, 59: Tennyson, The Princess, 131; In Homer, The Iliad, translated by Times, The London, Correspondent Lang, Leaf, and Myers, 19. Irving, The Conquest of Granada, Keats, 137. Kingsley, The Water-Babies, 64. of, 46. Twain, Mark, The Adventures of Whitman, 124. ENGLISH COMPOSITION. FIRST HIGH SCHOOL COURSE. By GEORGE R. CARPENTER, 12mo. Cloth. Price 75 cents, net. Toronto Globe:- The plan of the author is to teach one thing at a time, and to teach that one thing well. His directions as to how rhetoric should be studied, and the use to be made of standards and authorities, are exceedingly valuable, and well calculated to help the attentive reader to make the best use of his advantages for acquiring power of expression. It is an excellent exemplification of the new methods of education suited to the closing years of the nineteenth century. EXERCISES IN RHETORIC AND "It is a work of a pre-eminently practical character. Its arrangement is admirable, its presentation of essential facts lucid, its examples well chosen and interesting. It is handsomely bound, and altogether one of the most useful college manuals of rhetoric that have yet appeared." THE MACMILLAN COMPANY, 66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK. |