a fully-developed man who goes through a different form of the process, and if the delineation is less associated with beautiful imagery, the parable is deeper, and, we would venture to add, truer. Mr. Stevenson represents the individualizing influence of modern democracy in its more concentrated form. Whereas most fiction deals with the relation between man and woman (and the very fact that its scope is so much narrowed is a sign of the atomic character of cur modern thought), the author of this strange tale takes an even narrower range, and sets himself to investigate the meaning of the word self. No woman's name occurs in the book, no romance is even suggested in it; it depends on the interest of an idea; but so powerfully is this interest worked out that the reader feels that the same material might have been spun out to cover double the space, and still have struck him as condensed and close-knit workmanship. It is one of those rare fictions which make one understand the value of temperance in art. If this tribute appears exaggerated, it is at least the estimate of one who began Mr. Stevenson's story with a prejudice against it, arising from a recent perusal of its predecessor, his strangely dull and tasteless "Prince Otto." It is a psychological curiosity that the same man should have written both, and if they were bound up together, the volume would form the most striking illustration of a warning necessary for others besides the critic-the warning to judge no man by any single utterance, how complete soever.

We may associate Mr. Stevenson's striking picture with a little jeu d'esprit by an anonymous writer, about the same size, and fitly classed with it in some other respects, although it would be easy to regard the two as a complete contrast; "That Very Mab"* being as decided an example of intemperate as "The Strange Case" is of temperate art, and the sombre power shown in the representation of a profound moral idea being not less strongly opposed to the light touch which recalls Queen Mab to nineteenth-century England, and looks at the world through the fairy's eyes. But Queen Mab is witty, and there is something in the condensed power of Mr. Stevenson's tale which, though not necessarily implying wit, yet has a somewhat similar effect on the mind, and seems to belong to the same order of creative power. We will make the hazardous experiment of illustrating our epithet by extracting a satire on the Broad Church, which appears to us as full of truth as of wit, and while we lay our extract before the reader with all the diffidence with which we always detach brilliant writing from its context, we will venture unhesitatingly to assure him, that if he find it dull, nothing in the little volume is written for his benefit.

"Why won't you take up with my scientific religion? a religion, you know, that can be expressed with equal facility by emotional or by mathematical terms. It is as easy, when you once understand it, as the first proposition in Euclid. You have two points, Faith and Reason, and you draw a straight line between them. Then you must describe an equilateral triangle-I mean a scientific religion—on the straight line FR, between Faith and Reason.” "Oh!" said the Professor. "How do you do it?"

"First," said the Theologian hopefully, "taking F as your centre, FR as your radius, describe the circle of Theology. Then, taking R as your centre, FR as your radius, describe the circle of Logic. These two circles will inter

"That Very Mab." Longmans.

sect at Science, indicated in the proposition by the point S; join together SF, and then join SR, and you will have the equilateral triangle of a Scientific religion on the line FRS."

"Prove it," said the Professor grimly.

"Science and Faith," replied the Theologian readily, "equal Faith and Reason, because they are both radii of the same circle, Man being the radius of the Infinite. Theology

"Stop!" ejaculated the Professor in the utmost indignation.

"What do

you mean by it? I never in my life listened to such unmitigated nonsense. Who gave you leave to talk of a scientific religion as an equilateral triangle?" "I find in you," continued the Theologian with benevolence, " much to tolerate, much even to admire. I regret that, formerly, some of my predecessors may have been led, by your aggressive and turbulent spirit, to form unnecessarily harsh judgments of your character,and put unnecessarily tight thumbscrews on your thumbs; but as for me, I desire to win you by sympathy and affection and physico-theological afternoon parties, not to coerce you by vituperation. Your eye of Reason, as I have often observed, is already sufficiently developed; supplement it with the eye of Faith, and you will be quite complete. It will then only remain for you to learn which objects it is necessary to view with which eye, and carefully to close the other. This takes a little practice (which must not be attempted in Society), but I am sure that a person of your attainments will easily master the difficulty. We will then joyfully receive you into our ranks. No sacrifice on your part will be required; you will retain the old distinction of F.R.S. of which you have always been justly proud; but we shall take the liberty of conferring upon you the additional privilege of the honorary title of D.D."

We may conclude with a notice of two novels which are associated by the common possession of pathos as the predominant feeling of each. Ouida's last novel has her usual allowance of faults, obvious enough to every critic; and one in addition which we hardly know in any of her works, and which, from the novel-writer's point of view, is the most deadly of any, for parts of it are dull. But we, for our part, readily overlook all that is tasteless and ignorant, for the sake of that power which, in reminding us of the misery of the world, translates it into something softening, elevating, uniting. The reader may perhaps demur. An essay, a sermon, a moral treatise, he may plead, more fitly addresses itself to such a theme than a work of which the object is to give pleasure. We should fully allow that some immortal work, and a great deal of the most popular work, is almost entirely without the feeling. There is scarcely a touch of it in Homer, there is not a touch of it in many a novel much sought for at the libraries. But to us it appears one of the greatest gifts of the writer of fiction. It is not that we desire to be always contemplating the misery of the world; when we take up a novel we often desire to forget it. But an author who does not know it cannot make us forget it; and a writer who is to deliver us from its oppressive forms must be able to translate the manifold troubles of life, with all their bewildering entanglement, their distracting pettiness, into something that releases such tears as the foreign slaves shed on Hector's bier

"Their woes their own, a hero's death the plea." This power we almost always find in the writer who calls herself Ouida. We feel it in her writing as a keynote, sounding through

* "Othmar." By Ouida. Chatto & Windus.

much that is false and tawdry, and giving the whole the unity of a work of art; and also, as it seems to us, the purity of feeling that belongs to compassion as surely as cruelty belongs to lust. No deliverance from the darker passions of our nature, we believe, could be so absolute as that which should suffuse them with the passion of pity; where this influence is felt, all that is foul vanishes as beneath the touch of flame. The hero of Ouida's story, while devoted to a worthless wife (a personage quite as tiresome as she is wicked), is attracted by this deep passion of pity towards a beautiful girl who has been the victim. of her capricious patronage, and whom, in consequence, he finds starving in the streets of Paris. There is something original and beautiful in the feeling which springs up between the two. The love that has all of passion but its limitation is indeed not very uncommon in life; it is an incident of many a career that looks commonplace enough. But it has rarely been delineated in fiction, and we know no more touching description of it than that given here.

It is in this power of embodying, and as it were concentrating, a deep compassion for the sorrow of the world, that we would associate Ouida's last novel with that of an older writer, who yet has been so sparing of her power that, though her first book was greeted, if we remember right, with warm admiration about a generation ago, we now have to notice only the second. "The Story of Catherine "* has been spoken of by some critics as if it were a first work, and the bulk of the novelreaders of our day were in their cradles, or at least in their nurseries, when "A Lost Love" was given to the world; while of those (we may mention among them the name of Mrs. Gaskell and Mrs. Archer Clive) who welcomed in it the work, as they thought, of a new writer, many a one has passed away, and the unpretending little volume before us, like some strain of simple music, rouses memories in which it is itself forgotten. It would be exceeding the province of the critic to express at any length the wonder which arises, that the writer who showed so long ago that she had power to touch the spring of human emotions, has left it unexercised for the bulk of a lifetime; but it is difficult to judge the_new-comer without some reference to its predecessor. "A Lost Love" was a picture of unrequited affection; the "Story of Catherine" is the picture of an affection given to an unworthy object, or rather to a nonexistent object—a tender, fresh young heart captivated by a chivalric mask over cold and heartless selfishness. The theme is a well-worn one, but something in the treatment brings it home to the reader with less power, we think, than the earlier fiction, but with the same force of simplicity, and with more pathos. It is, as the former novel was also, rather a picture of emotion than of character; but there is something refreshing and restful in the trust of the author to a few simple chords for the whole effect, and the consistent avoidance of all effort at variety. The end affects the ear as an unexpected minor: the worthless husband is not killed off to make way for the faithful lover, and we are left with a sense of compassion, that is perhaps too like what is suggested by a large part of life. Ashford Owen in both her novels has followed what we think the truer instinct of the imaginative writer, in associating her work rather with music than with paint"The Story of Catherine." By Ashford Owen. Macmillan & Co.

ing. Pathetic narrative at all events owes its power to that which makes up the charm of music for the greater number of those who enjoy it that vague suggestion of sorrow which sets it for the moment as a thing apart from us, and relieves feeling by bringing imagination

to bear its burden for a time.

JULIA WEDGWOOD.

THE

II. POETRY.

HE books of poetry published within the last year in England give evidence of no failure of the sources of inspiration. The poets apparently take very little notice of the discouraging voices which tell them they have no right to be poetical; that they ought to accept their position, and consider themselves the degenerate overrefined successors of the great men who lived seventy years ago. The critics may talk as much as they please of this age of literary decline, with its proper vices of pedantry and artificiality. The poets pay no attention. They will not renounce their faith in the old divinities. They refuse to acknowledge that all the good songs have been sung -all the good subjects used up-all the harmonies exhausted.

"Tiresias" is a poem which might well be used to prove how little need there is for a master of poetry to take any newer way, or look for any other sort of theme, than those of the ancients. The songs and tragedies and annals of all countries contain stories of the self-devotion of one man for the people. But this last tragic monologue, the speech of Tiresias strengthening his son to face death, no more loses by comparison with earlier poems on such a subject than the hero himself would by comparison with others like him. It would be hard to find a nobler example than "Tiresias" of the highest poetical virtues gathered together in a short space.

Few poems of the modern world seem to bear out so well the philosopher's theory, that tragedy is a purification, clearing away all egoistic sentiment, and leaving only pure unselfish pity and awe. It shows that poetry has still its old power as a healer of private griefs and rages. To read it confers a sort of dignity upon the reader-shows him how the immortals regard the deaths of heroes

"Rejoicing that the sun, the moon, the stars,
Send no such light upon the ways of men
As one great deed."

It is a poem which, further, is among the most perfect in imagery and sound. The severity of its spirit does not make it abstract in language. There is no separation in it between the thought and the outward decoration of the thought. The life of the poem is all onethought, passion, and imagination inseparable. The following passage is of irresistible force-an overwhelming harmony of all voices and * "Tiresias, and other Poems." By Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Macmillan & Co. 1885.

instruments. Let who chooses distinguish them, and say what is due severally to the words, verse, thought, and fancy of the poet :

"Menaceus, thou hast eyes, and I can hear
Too plainly what full tides of onset sap

Our seven high gates, and what a weight of war
Rides on those ringing axles! jingle of bits,
Shouts, arrows, tramp of the horn-footed horse
That grind the glebe to powder! Stony showers
Of that ear-stunning hail of Arês crash
Along the sounding walls. Above, below,

Shock after shock, the strong-built towers and gates
Reel, bruised and battered with the shuddering
War-thunder of iron rams; and from within

The city comes a murmur void of joy,

Lest she be taken captive-maidens, wives,
And mothers with their babblers of the dawn,
And oldest age in shadow from the night,
Falling about their shrines before their gods,
And wailing 'Save us.'

"And they wail to thee!
These eyeless eyes, that cannot see thine own,
See this, that only in thy virtue lies

The saving of our Thebes; for yesternight,
To me the great god Arês, whose one bliss

Is war, and human sacrifice-himself

Blood-red from battle, spear and helmet tipt
With stormy light as on a mast at sea,
Stood out before a darkness, crying, “Thebes,
My Thebes, shall fall and perish, for I loathe
The seed of Cadmus-yet if one of these
By his own hand-if one of these-

"My son,

No sound is breathed so potent to coerce
And to conciliate as their names who dare

For that sweet mother-land which gave them birth
Nobly to do, nobly to die. Their names,

Graven on memorial columns, are a song

Heard in the future; few, but more than wall

And rampart, their examples reach a hand

Far thro' all years, and everywhere they meet
And kindle generous purpose, and the strength
To mould it into action pure as theirs."

There is another piece in the book which in many ways deserves to rank beside "Tiresias." "The Ancient Sage" is a noble ethical or philosophical poem, in which the wise man takes up a young poet's rendering of Vanitas Vanitatum, and shows how to the initiated his examples of the worthlessness of all things may have quite a different meaning. The sage does not attempt to confute the poet's melancholy argument by any counter-argument. It is not a jeu-parti between two poetical wranglers. He goes beyond the poet's arguments altogether; while accepting and even emphasizing the vanity of the earthly life, he has, besides, his mystical knowledge of a mode of union with the Divine, in which all the odds are made even. This knowledge is incommunicable; there is no argument to convince, against their will, those who prefer to keep their belief in illusion :

"For nothing worthy proving can be proven,

Nor yet disproven."

"The Ancient Sage" is even more remarkable than the author's "Lucretius," with which it is naturally compared, for the power shown