delineated. The young Duke of Orleans with his dissolute habits and chivalrous impulses, capable of being inspired by a pure passion and of making a resolute effort to repress his baser nature, is the most striking and lifelike figure. Iolande, the object of his passion, with her struggle between the claims of human emotion and spiritual enthusiasm, is a heroine worthy of Scott. The scenes in which she battles with her love for Orleans after he has told her that he is married, are very delicately handled. The self-delusion with which she strives to quench it in the ardours of devotional ecstasy, and her humiliation at recognising the failure of her attempt to heal the king's disorder by the application of the sacred tears, as the judicial penalty of her weakness, are pathetically true to human nature under the despotic conditions of an unnatural creed. If the truthfulness of her portrait be open to any exception, it is that no touches in the earlier scenes, wherein she appears as the pensive contrast of her lively companion Flos, prepare us for the eventual development of her disposition, but the suddenness of the emergency may sufficiently justify this. The character of Flos, which may be taken at first sight for one of Sir Henry's favourite studies of bright and sportive girlhood, undergoes a similarly abrupt transformation under the stimulus of wounded pride. Her revulsion from love to hate when her trusted knight proves false is thus happily symbolised by a bystander : There is no haunt the viper more affects Burgundy, with his treacherous instincts and proclivity to ignoble passion, forms a marked contrast to his rival. Montargis is a villain of the Occo stamp, but differentiated by the Iago-like craft with which he contrives to inflame his master's mind to the desired temperature of crime. The action is less spasmodic, and moves more swiftly to the goal, than in most of the author's plays; and this is the only one of the number to the effective representation of which upon the stage there seems no valid objection. If Sir Henry Taylor's verse offers few special attractions of melody or style, it is chargeable with few faults. Of all that he has written, we can select but two or three lines by which the ears of readers accustomed to Mr. Tennyson's music are likely to be haunted. The description (in Isaac Commenus) of a farewell as The dying cadence of a broken chord, may deserve to live. Another line in the same play What dream hath moulded that pathetic mouth ?— has the charm of skilfully varied alliteration. The words of Orleans to Iolande in St. Clement's Eve I ask no more, no more, oh, nothing more; only lack this to be equally melodious. It is difficult to understand how a poet, whose instinct has guided him to the choice of these verbal harmonies, can have allowed such a grating collocation of consonants as from clenched'st fingers wrings' to pass uncorrected through successive editions. But if peculiar sweetness is rare with him, extreme harshness is still rarer. Here and there some untuneable line or phrase may jar upon an acute sense; but where the level of versification is so smooth the introduction of a few discords is defensible to prevent monotony. His gravest fault of style is a tendency to pedantry, which is seen at its worst in Isaac Comnenus. On the other hand, he is seldom, if ever, obscure; and though a failure in the fire of thought or emotion sometimes leaves him tame, he never conceals the deficiency by a cloudy smoke of words. His lyrical gift is not remarkable. Two or three of the ballads interspersed amid the plays, particularly The Lion of Flanders' in Philip van Artevelde and Thorbioga's battle-chant in Edwin the Fair ('By Wellesburne and Charleccote ford'), have considerable spirit, but the songs have little spontaneity. The interlude between the two parts of Philip van Artevelde is described in the preface of 1834 (here substantially reprinted) as a concession to the prevalent taste for the sentimental and fantastic poetry of Byron and Shelley, upon the pretensions of which to the foremost artistic rank the writer passes a severe judgment, although consenting to cultivate and employ it' as an occasional pastime. We doubt if any one, who had not the preface before him, would have discovered this concession from the interlude itself. Its mild, not to say insipid, flavour of romance a little reminds us of Scott, but not at his strongest, and of Byron only at his weakest. Of resemblance to Shelley it would strain the keenest critical microscope to detect a trace. The miscellaneous poems collected in the third volume bear, on the other hand, obvious marks of the influence of Wordsworth, whose personal acquaintance Sir Henry had the privilege to make, and who almost appears to realise his ideal of poetic perfection. Of the characteristic attributes which constitute the master's title to universal veneration, his deep insight into nature, and his intense human sympathy, the pupil offers a pale but genuine reflection. The poems written on visiting the Lakes of Varese and Lugano, and the address to the Lynnburn, exhibit this most fully. In the latter he has closely followed his model by selecting a favourite object of memory as a centre for fancy to encircle. The stanzas on St. Helen's, Auckland, carry imitation to the extreme limit of adopting almost the identical language of a wellVOL. VIII.-No. 45. 3 K known piece in the Poems of Sentiment and Reflection. The triteness of the theme, however, is redeemed by the happy expression, and the lyrist is unquestionably seen at his best in the following verses : The sounds that round about me rise Are what none other hears; I see what meets no other eyes, The breaking of the summer's morn--- The freshness of the faëry land Alas! the real never lent Those tints too bright to last; In every change of man's estate Nor mourn I the less manly part It must be added that Sir Henry reproduces also, in a modified form, what Wordsworth's warmest admirers must concede to be the lower elements, not to say the drawbacks, of his power, viz., undue egotism and didactic tediousness, together with the conservative and ecclesiastical instincts which tended to narrow his sympathies. The poems already named, and one or two others in the collection, will furnish evidence of this to any one who cares to seek for it. But it would be ungenerous to dwell upon blemishes which, if partly resulting from congenital defects, may be mainly traced to the too faithful study of a venerated exemplar. The two volumes of prose works which complete the present edition display the same gifts of practical imagination, discrimination of character, and knowledge of the world which constitute the chief value of the poetry. The Notes from Life and The Statesman are the precipitate of an active mind which has undergone a long and quiet process of interfusion under favourable conditions. If the 2 My eyes are dim,' &c.-The Fountain.] Notes (which are in effect essays) cannot be said to possess any distinctive intellectual quality, the writer's sound judgment, scholarly culture, and moral refinement lift them wholly out of the ordinary category of didactic treatises to which their old-fashioned sententious form gives them a superficial resemblance. The Statesman, which might be less ambitiously entitled The Civilian, embodies the results of a life's experience in the public service, but, though addressed more particularly to those who move within that limited sphere of duty, may be read with advantage by hundreds outside it. Sir Henry's prose style is obviously modelled upon that of the seventeenth century classics, and alternately reminds us of Lord Bacon's pith and Milton's stateliness. A good memory enables him to diversify his serious observations very pleasantly with humorous anecdotes and apposite quotations. His egotism is too frank to be disagreeable, and the naïveté with which he appeals to his own dramas, when in want of an authoritative illustration, puts to shame the timidity of such writers as resort for that purpose to a fictitious manufacture of 'old plays.' It would be doing injustice to his critical acumen to regard his preface to Philip van Artevelde as a complete poetical credo and a deliberate verdict upon two leading poets of our century. Viewed as the work of his youth, its crudity and onesidedness are intelligible enough, and the only matter for surprise is that he should have seen fit to reprint it. His judgment upon Byron is true so far as it goes, but the truth is only half told when the claims of the poet's passion, wit, and picturesqueness are so grudgingly recognised. A constitutional want of sympathy manifestly precludes Sir Henry from apprehending the nature of such a poet as Shelley, the view of whose qualifications here put forward is almost ludicrously inadequate. To estimate the larger scope of the critic's matured vision, this juvenile production should be compared with the chapter on The Life Poetic' in Notes from Life, and the reviews of Wordsworth and Mr. Aubrey De Vere in the fifth volume. He is rarely to be seen at more advantage than when interpreting the poetic philosophy of the one and analysing the devout and graceful spirit of the other. Two or three disquisitions upon social subjects are appended. Stuart Mill's arguments for the political equalisation of women have probably seldom received a more just and temperate consideration than in the last of these, which exhibits the writer's Conservative attitude in its most favourable aspect. HENRY G. HEWLETT. BRIBERY AND CORRUPTION. THE appointment of divers Royal Commissions to inquire into the 'existence of corrupt practices at elections for members to serve in Parliament,' is a palpable proof that we still bribe and are bribed. If we could with truth and confidence assert that those which are being visited by Royal Commissions are the only boroughs in which corrupt practices prevailed or prevailed extensively at the late general election, we might congratulate ourselves on the fact that the black list is by no means a long one; but unfortunately it is sufficiently notorious that in many places where a petition would undoubtedly have been successful, it was not presented, that in others where threatened it was hushed up, and allowed to drop, while some petitions were arranged' after being filed, and the worst features of others which did come on for hearing were carefully concealed. In moving for Royal Commissions, the Attorney-General quoted figures which, as he gave them, seemed to show that the number of petitions was decreasing. The figures, may, however, be made to prove very nearly the opposite, if looked at in another light, while it is probable that the number of petitions at any given general election is not by any means necessarily an accurate test of the amount of corrupt practices which prevailed. It is possible, however, and perhaps probable, that, except in certain boroughs, we are not quite so directly corrupt as we used to be not very many years ago, and for this result we have to thank the Ballot Act, and the increased enlightenment of public opinion on the question. The exchange of so much money for the vote is perhaps now less frequently the rule, and if it is any advantage to believe that where payment is given it is usually of smaller amount than it used to be, we may, I think, fairly congratulate our 1 In 1857 there were 46 petitions presented, of which 22 were withdrawn, 17 were unsuccessful, and 7 successful. In 1859 41 were presented, 22 withdrawn, 11 unsuccessful, 9 successful. In 1865 the figures were respectively 55, 26, 15, and 14. In 1868 (exceptional year in consequence of new jurisdiction given to judges) they were 82, 32, 31, and 19. In 1874, 30, 8, 7, and 15. This year 42 were presented, 14 withdrawn, 11 unsuccessful, and 17 successful.-See Attorney-General's speech, Sept. 2, 1880. Eight Royal Commissions have been appointed—namely, one for each of the following boroughs: Gloucester, Oxford, Macclesfield, Boston, Knaresborough, Sandwich, Chester, Canterbury. |