Mr. Arnold advises young poets to avoid modern innovations in poetic style and diction, and to seek their models in classic antiquity. His own poetical productions all evince a highly cultured taste. A. Austin. Alfred Austin began his poetical career by the publication of the satirical poems, the Season, and the Golden Age; but he is not exclusively a satirist, and he has since then produced the Human Tragedy, Savonarola, Soliloquies in Song, and at the Gate of the Convent. From one of his later works we extract a few characteristic lines, instinct with a pleasing hopeful feeling: I feel no more the snow of years, My manhood keeps the dew of morn, Being right glad that I was born, M. F. Tupper. Martin F. Tupper, born in 1810, the author of Proverbial Philosophy and Geraldine, a sequel to Coleridge's Christabel, has likewise written Ballads for the Times, many of which have been set to music, and they are all recommended by the hopeful and manly sentiments they express. Among the most popular are the following: HONEST FELLOW, SORE BESET. Honest fellow, sore beset, Vexed by troubles quick and keen, How much worse it might have been. Worthily thy faults deserve More than all thine eyes have seen; Though the night be dark and long, How much worse it might have been. God, the Good One, calls to us, I LOVE TO LINGER. I love to linger on the track My foot falls lightly on the sward, Old places have a charm for me NEVER GO GLOOMILY. Never go gloomily, man with a mind, Gives with a smile what you take with a tear. All will be right, look to the light, Morning is ever the daughter of night All that was black will be all that is bright. Many a foe is a friend in disguise, Many a sorrow a blessing most true, Stand in the van, strive like a man, Mr. Tupper is certainly not one of the great poets of the Victorian Age, but he is always clear; and pos sessing the valuable secret of popularity, has a large circle of admirers. Among the remaining poets of this period we may mention Dr. C. Mackay (Egeria, etc.), Mr. D. F. M'Carthy, author of the Poets and Dramatists of Ireland, and the translator of several of Calderon's dramas; George Eliot (Spanish Gipsy); Miss Procter, (daughter of B. W. Procter, better known as Barry Cornwall), author of Legends and Lyrics; Rev. William Barnes (Poems in the Dorset Dialect); Rev. John Keble (the Christian Year, Lyra Innocentium, etc.) Mr. C. Patmore (the Angel in the House); Mr. Charles Swain (Metrical Essays); Mr. Francis Davis, the "Belfast Man" (Lispings of the Lagan, etc.); and Mr. John W. Pitchford (Bramble Cloisters) from whose Idyll of the Dawn we give a brief extract, not unworthy of the author of the Seasons: Now shoot o'er dewy hedge, Through opening woods, the sun's first rays, The trailing mists drift from the shining woods, Poet-Translators. Among the very numerous poet-translators of the present period, it is impossible for us to notice any but the most eminent; and one of the first of these is Edward Earl of Derby, the author of an admirable translation of Homer's Iliad, in English blank verse, which appeared in 1864. Of the many existing English translations of the Iliad it is generally considered the most perfect. Chapman's version, in fourteen-syllable metre and in rhyme, is now out of date, though it was a wonderful work for the Elizabethan age; Pope's celebrated translation, in the English heroic metre, however brilliant and harmonious, is rather a paraphrase than a translation; Cowper's version is accurate, but dull. In Lord Derby's translation we find accuracy and elegance most happily combined; as may be seen by his rendering of the well-known moonlight scene in Book VIII: Full of proud hopes, upon the pass of war All night they camped, and frequent blazed their fires: With store of provender before them laid, The attack of Hector on the Achaean camp, in Book XII., shows us that Lord Derby is as much at home in depicting a warlike scene as a peaceful one: Close to the gate he stood, and planting firm He sprang the gods except, no power might meet Another translation of the Iliad, not quite so equable, but in other respects hardly inferior to that of Lord Derby, has been made by the philologist, critic and historian, Mr. Wright. We subjoin Mr. Wright's rendering of the indignant rejoinder of Achilles to the taunts of Agamemnon, in Book I.: O clothed with insolence, rapacious chief, What Greek henceforth will prompt obedience yield, I have no quarrel with the Trojans: they For shadowing mountains and the roaring sea. Wrongs suffered by thy brother and by thee, Mr. W. E. Gladstone, the late Premier (author of Studies on Homer) has published a translation of the first book of the Iliad in the trochaic measure of Tennyson's Locksley Hall. So far as the translation goes, it is pleasant enough reading; but we scarcely think the fifteen-syllable metre could have been maintained without wearisome monotony in so long an epic as the Iliad. Mr. Worsley has undertaken, and very creditably executed, the difficult task of adapting the Odyssey to the English Spenserian stanza. With regard to most of the other Greek and Roman poets, the English versions of Dryden, Rowe, and Moore are still the best. Dr. William Maginn (1793-1842), the poet and critic, who spoke fluently and wrote in six languages, produced some admirable translations from Lucian, and a series of lays, called Homeric Ballads, in the style of Macaulay's Lays of Ancient Rome. In modern literature, the translations from the German |