O my lost love, and my own, own love,
And my love that loved me so!

Is there never a chink in the world above
Where they listen for words from below?
Nay, I spoke once, and I grieved thee sore→→→
I remember all that I said;

And now thou wilt hear me no more-no more
Till the sea gives up her dead.

Thou didst set thy foot on the ship, and sail

To the ice-fields and the snow;

Thou wert sad, for thy love did nought ayail,
And the end I could not know.

How could I tell I should love thee to-day,
Whom that day I held not dear?

How could I know I should love thee away,
When I did not love thee near?

We shall walk no more through the sodden plain
With the faded bents o'erspread.

We shall stand no more by the seething main
While the dark wrack drives o'erhead;

We shall part no more in the wind and the rain,
Where thy last farewell was said;

But perhaps I shall meet thee and know thee again
When the sea gives up her dead.

MRS. AUGUSTA WEBSTER, has published

Dramatic Studies, '1866; 'A Woman Sold, and other Poems,' 1867; Portraits;' &c. She has also translated the Prometheus Bound' and 'Medea.'

The Gift.-By MRS. WEBSTER.

O happy glow, O sun-bathed tree,
O golden-lighted river,
A love-gift has been given me,
And which of you is giver?

I came upon you something sad,
Musing a mournful measure,
Now all my heart in me is glad
With a quick sense of pleasure.

I came upon you with a heart
Half sick of life's vexed story,

And now it grows of you a part,
Steeped in your golden glory.

A emile into my heart has crept,
And laughs through all my being;
New joy into my life has leapt,
A joy of only seeing!

O happy glow, O sun-bathed tree,
O golden-lighted river,

A love-gift has been given me,
And which of you is giver?

LORD NEAVES-FREDERICK LOCKER-AUSTIN DOBSON.

A choice little collection of 'Songs and Verses, Social and Scientific' (1869), most of them originally published in Blackwood's Magazine,' has been garnered up' in a small handsome volume by their author, the HON. LORD NEAVES, a Scottish judge. They are lively, witty, and sarcastic, the sarcasm being levelled at abuses and absurdities in social life. Charles Neaves was born in Edinburgh in 1800, was admitted to the bar in 1822, and raised to the bench in 1854. He was early distinguished as a scholar, of fine taste and fancy, and his Greek and Latin have not disqualified him for law or logic. Sir Edward Coke, that father of English jurisprudence, said: 'It standeth well

with the gravity of our lawyers to cite verses'-and to write as well es cite verses cannot be derogatory to the dignity of Themis.

How to Make a Novel, a Sensational Song.

Try with me and mix what will make a novel,
All hearts to transfix in house or hall, or hovel.
Put the caldron on, set the bellows blowing,
We'll produce anon something worth the shewing.
Never mind your plot, 'tisn't worth the trouble:
Throw into the pot what will boil and bubble.
Character's a jest, what's the use of study?

All will stand the test that's black enough and bloody.

Here's the Newgate Guide, here's the Causes Celebres;
Tumble in beside, pistol, gun, and sabre;

These police reports, those Old Bailey trials,
Horrors of all sorts, to match the Seven Vials.

Down into a well, lady, thrust your lover;

Truth, as some folks tell, there he may discover.
Stepdames, sure though slow, rivals of your daughters,
Bring as from below Styx and all its waters.

Crime that breaks all bounds, bigamy and arson;
Poison, blood, and wounds, will carry well the farce on.
Now it's just in shape; yet with fire and murder.
Treason, too, and rape might help it all the further.
Or, by way of change, in your wild narration,
Choose adventures strange of fraud and personation.
Make the job complete; let your vile assassin
Rob and forge and cheat, for his victim passin'.
Tame is virtue's school: paint, as more effective,
Villain, knave, and fool, with always a detective.
Hate for Love may sit; gloom will do for gladness,
Banish sense and wit, and dash in lots of madness.
Stir the broth about, keep the furnace glowing:
Soon we'll pour it out in three bright volumes flowing,
Some may jeer and jibe; we know where the shop is,
Ready to subscribe for a thousand copies!

A small volume of light graceful London Lyrics,' by FREDERICK LOCKER, Something in the style of Luttrell of Praed, has been so popular as to reach a fifth edition (1872).

Vanity Fair.

'Vanitas vanitatum' has rung in the ears
Of gentle and simple for thousands of years;
The wail still is heard. yet its notes never scare
Either simple or gentle from Vanity Fair.

I often hear people abusing it. yet
There the young go to learn, and the old to forget;
The mirth may be feigning, the sheen may be glare,
But the gingerbread's gilded in Vanity Fair.

Old Dives there rolls in his chariot, but mind
Atra Cura is up with the lacqueys behind;
Joan trudges with Jack-are the sweethearts aware
Of the trouble that waits them in Vanity Fair?

We saw them all go, and we something may learn
Of the harvest they reap when we see them return;
The tree was enticing, its branches are bare-
Heigh-ho for the promise of Vanity Fair!

That stupid old Dives, once honest enough,
His honesty sold for star, ribbon, and stuff;
And Joan's pretty face has been clouded with care
Since Jack bought her ribbons at Vanity Fair.
Contemptible Dives! too credulous Joan!
Yet we all have a Vanity Fair of our own;
My son, you have yours, but you need not despair-
I own I've a weakness for Vanity Fair.

Philosophy halts, wisest counsels are vain-
We go, we repent, we return there again;

To-night you will certainly meet with us there-
So come and be merry in Vanity Fair.

Another writer of light airy vers de societe is a young poet, AUSTIN DOBSON. He has a graceful fancy, with humour, and a happy art of giving a new colour to old phrases. His volume of 'Vignettes in Rhyme is now in a third edition. Some serious verses (After Se dan,' &c.) evince higher powers, which Mr. Dobson should culti

vate.

POET-TRANSLATORS-BOWRING, BLACKIE, ETC.

The most re

The poet-translators of this period are numerous. markable for knowledge of foreign tongues and dialects was SIR JOHN BOWRING, who commenced in 1821 a large series of translations-Specimens of the Russian Poets,' 'Batavian Anthology.' 'Ancient Poetry and Romances of Spain,' Specimens of the Polish Poets,' 'Servian Popular Poetry,' 'Poetry of the Magyars,' 'Cheskian Anthology, or the Poetical Literature of Bohemia, &c. The last of these works appeared in 1832. In 1825 Dr. Bowring became editor of the Westminister Review,' he sat some time in parliament, and in 1854 was knighted and made governor of Hong kong. He was the literary executor of Jeremy Bentham, and author of political treatises, original poetry, and various other contributions to literature The original bias of Sir John Bowring seems to have been towards literature, but his connection with Bentham, and his public appointments, chiefly distinguished his career. Sir John was a native of Exeter, born in 1792, died in 1872.-Mr. JOHN STUART BLACKIE (born in Glasgow in 1809, educated in Aberdeen and Edinburgh, and Professor of Greek in the university of Edinburgh) in 1834 gave an English version of Goethe's Faust;' and in 1850 translated the lyrical dramas of Eschylus, two volumes. Both of these versions were well received; and Mr. Blackie has aided greatly in exciting a more general study of Greek in Scotland,

In 1866 he published an elaborate work, 'Homer and the Iliad,' being a translation of the Iliad' in ballad measure, a third volume 'of critical dissertations, and a fourth of notes philological and archæo

logical. In 1870 the Professor put forth a volume of War Songs of the Germans.' He has published several other translations, and also origi al poems, chiefly on Highland scenes and legends. In 1874 he zealously advocated the founding of a chair of Celtic Literature in the University of Edinburgh. By the spring of 1876, the funds necessary for this purpose were nearly collected. The enthusiasm of the Professor bears down all opposition! In 1874 Professor Blackie published a scholarly and interesting volume, 'Hora Hellenicæ,' being a collection of essays and discussions on important points of Greek philology and antiquity, from which we give an extract;

The Theology of Homer.

The theology of the Homeric poems is not the theology of an individual, but of an age; and this altogether irrespective of the Wolfian theory, which, in a style so characteristically German, with one sublimely sweeping negation, removed at once the personal existence of the supposed poet, and the actual coherence of the existing poem. The principal value of Wolf's theory, in the eye of many genuine lovers of poetry, is that, while it robbed us of the poet Homer and his swarms of fair fancies, it restored to us the Greek people, and the r rich garden of heroic tradition, watered by fountains of purely national feeling, and freshened by the breath of a healthy popular opinion, which, precisely because it can be ascribed to no particular person, must be taken as the exponent of the common national existence. To have achieved this revolution of critical sentiment with regard to the Homeric poems, to have set before the eyes of Europe the world-wide distance between the poetry of a Shelley or a Coleridge writing to express their own opinions, and the songs of a race of wandering minstrels singing to give a new echo to the venerable voices of a common tradition; this were enough for the Berlin philologer to have done, without attempting to establish those strange paradoxes, repugnant alike to the instincts of a sound æsthetical and of a healthy historical criticism, which have made his name so famous. The fact is, that the peculiar dogmas cf Wolf, denying the personality of the poet and the unity of the poems, have nothing whatever to do with that other grand result of his criticism to which we have alluded-the clear statement of the distinction between the sung poetry of popular tradition and the written poetry of individual authorship.

Not because there was no Homer, are the Homeric poems so generically distinct from the modern productions of a Dante, a Milton, and a Goethe; but because Homer lived in an age when the poet, or rather the singer, had, and from his position could have no other object than to reflect the popular tradition of which his mind was the mirror. As certainly as a party newspaper or review of the present day represents the sentiments of the party of which it is the organ, so certainly did a Demodocus or a Phemius, a Homer or a Cinathus-the public singers of the public banquets of a singing, not a printing age-represent the sentiments of the parties, that is, the people in general, for whose entertainment they exercised their art. "Tis the very condition, indeed, of all popular writing in the large sense, that it must serve the people before it masters them; that while entertainment is its direct, and instruction only its indirect object, it must, above all things, avoid coming rudely into conflict with public feeling or public prejudice on any subject, especially on so tender a subject as religion; nay, rather, by the very necessity of its position give up the polemic attitude altogether in reference to public error and vice, and be content, along with many glorions truths, to give immortal currency to any sort of puerile and perverse fancy that may be interwoven with the motley texture of popular thought. A poet, even in modern times, when the great public contains every possible variety of small publics, can ill afford to be a preacher; and if he carries his preaching against the vices of the age beyond a certain length, he changes his genus, and becomes, like Coleridge, a metaphysician, or, like Thomas Carlyle, a prophet.

But in the Homeric days, corresponding as they do exactly to our medieval times, when the imaginations of all parties reposed quietly on the bosom of a common

faith, to suppose, as Herodotus in a well known passage does, that the popular minstrel had it in his power to describe for the first time the function of the gods, and to assign them appropriate names, were to betray a complete misconception both of the nature of popular poetry in general, and of the special character of the popular poetry of the Greeks, as we find it in the pages of the Iliad and Odyssey. So far as the mere secular materials of his songs are concerned, Homer, we have the best reason to believe, received much more than he gave; but in the current theology and religious sentiment, we have not the slightest authority for supposing that he invented anything at all. Amid the various wealth of curious and not always coherent religious traditions. he might indeed select this and reject that as more or less suited for his immediate purpose; he might give prominence to one aspect of his country's theology, while he threw another into the shade; he might even adorn and beautify to some extent what was rude, and here and there lend a fixity to what was vague; but whatsoever in the popular creed was stable, his airy music had no power to shake; whatsoever in the vulgar tradition had received fixed and rigid features, his plastic touch had no power to soften.

In 1853 an excellent translation of some of the Spanish dramas of Calderon was published by Mr. D. F. M’CARTHY.-Various works in the prose literature of Germany have been correctly and ably rendered by MRS. SARAH AUSTIN (1793-1867), a lady of great talent and learning, descended from the Taylors of Norwich. Among Mrs. Austin's translations are Characteristics of Goethe,' 1833; Ranke's History of the Popes,' 1840; and Fragments from the German Prose Writers,' 1841. Mrs. Austin also translated from the French Guizot's work on the French Revolution, and Cousin's Report on Prussian Education. She also edited the work of her daughter, LADY DUFF GORDON (who died in 1869), entitled · Letters from Egypt,' 1863–65.— A series of interesting volumes, Beautiful Thoughts from Greek, Latin, Italian, and French Authors,' with translations, have been published (1864-66) by DR. C. TAIT RAMAGE.

SCOTTISH POETS.

WILLIAM THOM.

WILLIAM THOM, the Inverary poet' (1789-1848), was author of some sweet, fanciful, and pathetic strains. He had wrought for several years as a weaver, and when out of employment, traversed the country as a pedler, accompanied by his wife and children. This precarious, unsettled life induced irregular and careless habits, and every effort to place the poor poet in a situation of perma ent comfort and respectability failed. He first attracted notice by a poem inserted in the Aberdeen Herald,' entitled The Blind Boy's Pranks: in 1844 he published a volume of Rhymes and Recollections of a Hand-loom Weaver.' He visited London, and was warmly patronised by his countrymen and others; but returning to Scotland, he died at Dundee after a period of distress and penury. A sum of about £300 was collected for his widow and family.