They can tell her, however, of cer- it is possible that she may learn tain fauns and wood-gods from whom something, and the scene changes: CERES. O Fauns and Satyrs of the merry forests! FAUNS. O venerable Goddess! Large-browed, large-eyed, presence august and holy! We can follow the search no further. We were not quite correct in saying that the fable is not moralized in the poem. The poem is not embarrassed by any moralizing as it proceeds; but at the close, Iris descends with a message which contains the moral. In a review of this volume, we may be allowed to leave unnoticed those of Mr. De Vere's poems of which the main drift is ethical or doctrinal; for into this volume they have not been admitted. There is to be found in those poems great strength and acuteness of the logical faculty, but not invariable clearness of exposition; and for this reason, however full and far reaching, they are probably those of his poems which are the least likely to be popular. It may be observed that ordinary readers of poetry will tolerate much obscurity in our popular poets, when merely brooding over the common mysteries of our being, on which all men who think at all ruminate more or less, and into which no one thinker, think he never so deeply, can penetrate much further than another; for, however obscurely the theme may be treated, the ordinary reader accounts the obscurity as inevitable, and does not find himself in the dilemma of either blaming his author or blaming himself for what he cannot comprehend: when we may reasonably presume that we are out of soundings, we make no complaint of the man who throws the deep-sea line. But when novel views are presented of subjects which, though deep and dark, are not confessedly inscrutable, the ordinary reader resents everything which he does not understand as an insult to his understanding. He wrangles with his author, and under a secret suspicion that his author's reply will be 'intelligibilia non intellectum adfero,' he makes it his business, and a duty which he owes to himself, to convict his author of incomprehensibility. There may have been reasons, therefore, for excluding from the selected poems of an eminently intellectual poet, some which, though inferior to none in depth and richness, might have involved him in a quarrel with his readers on the score of subtlety. And, indeed, even without including the essentially philosophical poems, it would have been impossible to make a selection which would not have presented, with sufficient frequency, poems affording, casually and incidentally, some searching insights into human life and the nature of To a few such insights we will point: man. Alas! and with what gifts shall I pursue thee, Goodness, Spinoza tells us, does not more surely make men happy than happiness makes them good. But we do not recollect to have met, hitherto, the observation, which we doubt not is generally just, that an exuberance of joy by constitution and temperament, whatever may be its dangers in some instances from other inroads, is a security against passion. Such a nature not only rejoices in its strength, but, as against one enemy, is strong by reason of its joyfulness. Again: Vainly tries the soul to mingle, Many a voice crying from the deeps To whom the truth makes free The moral epigram which follows, in manner rather reminds us of Quarles: Three prayers to heaven the Lover doth present We have now but one class and kind more of Mr. De Vere's poems to take account of, and that the class and kind most opposite to the ethical and doctrinal-the lyrical series, entitled Inisfail, published with other poems in 1861, and separately in 1863. It is a chronological series of poems illustrative of Irish history from the twelfth to the eighteenth century, each poem clothing itself in the character and costume of the time to which it belongs, as though it had been the growth of the time. The actual growth of this kind, which Ireland produced in past ages, is unfortunately known only to antiquaries. The songs and ballads which spring out of the heart of a country at particular periods of its existence are sometimes of great interest to the historian-a light to his steps and a lantern to his paths; but to be popular in after times, they must be in a language which is popularly understood by a literate VOL. LXIX. NO. CCCCXIII. race. Percy's Reliques have been generally believed to have wrought the great change which took place in English poetry in the beginning of this century, from didactic to romantic. The ballads restored to life by Percy were in our own tongue, with modifications of time and place, which were, perhaps, rather advantageous than otherwise, veiling their defects, and vouching for their antiquity. But ancient Irish songs are utterly inaccessible to us, and it seems to have been Mr. De Vere's endeavour to supply from his imagination the songs which we might have had, and ought to have had, if it had pleased Providence to put English tongues into the mouths of Irish bards. If there be any large class of readers to whom Irish history and its heroes are as familiar as Scotch history and the names of Wallace and Bruce, in those readers Inisfail may awaken the same feelings as those which have responded 88 to the ballads of Burns and Scott. In Ireland, if their own history is well known to the Irish, and if they do not talk too much to read, such a response may well be expected. In England, Inisfail will have to rely more upon the romantic and dramatic spirit of its verse, and will have little assistance, it is to be feared, from historical associations. In the range of epochs which the volume covers, the poet finds mankind in divers moods even in Ireland; though Ireland is, no doubt, the least mutable of nations, the strongest in its idiosyncracies, and the least accessible to influences from without for evil or for goodeven the infusion of alien blood having been subdued in no long time to the aboriginal complexion. The poet, however, changes his hand with the change of epoch, and many varieties of ballad, legend, ode, and song, are included in the series, the Irish idiosyncracy, to a certain degree, harmonizing the whole. It is but a few of the poems that are transferred into this volume, and as it is with this volume only that we have to deal, we shall be content to produce but one trait of but one bard-the bard Ethell. He lived in the thirteenth century, and was a good Christian in his way, but eminently an Irish Christian; and giving some account of the changes which had taken place during his long life, he states the objections which he cannot but feel to the extreme views of the Franciscans, who had established a convent in his neighbourhood, and preached forgiveness of injuries with a want of discrimination which was highly distasteful to Ethell: All praise to the man who brought us the Faith! Who heard in a dream from Tyrawley's strand That convent where now the Franciscans dwell": Columba was mighty in prayer and war; But the young monk preaches as loud as the bell, That love must rule all, and all wrongs be forgiven, Or else, he is sure, we shall reach not heaven! This doctrine I count right cruel and hard: And when I am laid in the old churchyard The habit of Francis I will not wear. I forgive old Cathbar who sank my boat: Must I pardon Feargal who slew my son ;- There never was chief more brave than he! The night he was born Loch Dool up-burst: He was bard-loving, gift-making, loud of glee, The last to fly, to advance the first. He was like the top spray upon Uladh's oak, He was like the tap-root of Argial's pine: He was secret and sudden: as lightning his stroke: There was none that could fathom his hid design! He slept not: if any man scorned his alliance He struck the first blow for a frank defiance With that look in his face, half night half light, Like the lake gust-blacken'd and ridged with white! The Seers his reign had predicted long; That others beholding might take more pains. He bought a gold book for a thousand cows; With this, which might have been supposed to be the product of another man, if not of another time, we close our extracts from the works Our of this very various poet. estimate of them we would rather give in the words of Mr. Landor than in our own: Welcome who last hast climbed the cloven hill The satin slipper and the mirror boot Or who hath seen (ah! how few care to see!) The closebound tresses and the robe succinct? Thou hast; and she hath placed her palm in thine: Walk ye together in our fields and groves: We have gay birds and graver; we have none Of varied note, none to whose harmony Late hours will listen, none who sing alone. Come reascend with me the steeps of Greece It was said by Sir Philip Francis that praise is endurable only when it is in odium tertii; and Mr. Landor's practice of panegyric would have met the views of Sir Philip. We have omitted some lines of fierce invective against Ireland, and we have no sympathy with the contempt expressed for contemporary poetry at large. In the rest we concur. IT THE PLEASURES OF DIFFICULTY. [T would be very difficult to define precisely what is pleasure-almost as difficult as to define what is happiness. We pursue happiness, or some symbol for it, through life, and occasionally perhaps pluck pleasure by the way. But we have not time to examine the pleasure we have seized: ''tis odour fled as soon as shed;' and though the recollection of it lingers about us, and we sigh for its renewal-we never meet it again in the same shape: when next it comes to us it is like, but not the same. The pleasures that are gone are gone for ever; the pleasures which are to come must be more or less new, as we who enjoy them are more or less changed. The difference may be almost imperceptible, as the difference in ourselves from day to day is imperceptible; but a pleasure which we might call the same is in reality only similar, when experienced for the second time, and presents at least one essential point of difference, the want of novelty. But as there are degrees of novelty, as of almost all things, so by frequent repetition a pleasure becomes less and less like the first experience of it, until at length many things which we once regarded as our greatest pleasures cease to be pleasures at all. The triumph with which a child jerks his first minnow to the bank with a stick and a string is not exceeded by that with which, a score of years later, he kills a gigantic salmon by a dexterous throw of the fly, and a skilful contest with the fish. As all the toys and games of childhood cease by degrees to please, so one hears many people proclaiming that childhood is the happiest part of life. But perhaps, after all, maturity and old age may be as happy in themselves, if only they can refrain from looking back. Childhood cannot discern that some pleasures are irrevocably gone-all other ages can; and childhood enjoys more than any other age the pleasures of anticipation. But childhood is scarcely left behind ere we learn a lesson which counterbalances all childhood's advantages. When ever the anticipation is great, the pleasure is proportionately small. To anticipate is to borrow for the present at the expense of the future; and unless we go through the Insolvent Court presided over by Commissioner Death, we cannot avoid the payment of such debts. In short, to use the homely old adage, we cannot eat the cake and have it.' If, then, we are willing to learn the lessons which experience repeats to us every day, and when we have learnt them to act upon them, our pleasures may be as numerous at one period of our lives as at another. We have only to be content not to mourn for pleasures past, and to 'take no thought for the morrow.' And the greatest and most permanent of all pleasures are the pleasures of difficulty. They are the greatest in number and in degree, for we meet nothing more frequently than difficulty; and the highest of all pleasures is the consciousness of having surmounted a difficulty, and the next to it the satisfaction of having made a gallant, though unsuccessful struggle. And they are in two ways the most permanent; for on the one hand the pleasure of the struggle lasts throughout the whole of the struggle, and is increased when the struggle is successfully ended; and, on the other hand, the pleasure is susceptible of unlimited repetitions, as the number of difficulties which may be encountered is unlimited; and the pleasure of dealing with a new difficulty is a new pleasure, though still belonging to the one class-the pleasures of difficulty. But it may with very great justice be said that pleasure is not the chief feature of a great and protracted struggle with a difficulty-that there are moments of depression, of disgust, even of despair. So, undoubtedly, there are; and in that very fact lies the great proof that difficulty is a source of pleasure. It is where the energies relax that depression comes in; it is where the difficulty has been removed from the category of the difficult, and transferred to |