Reviews

I stand on Bunker’s towering pile,

K. E. V.’s little volume is a series of poems on the Saints. Each poem is preceded by a brief biography of the Saint it celebrates – which is a very necessary precaution, as few of them ever existed. It does not display much poetic power, and such lines as these on St. Stephen, —

Did ever man before so fall asleep?A cruel shower of stones his only bed,For lullaby the curses loud and deep,His covering with blood red —

may be said to add another horror to martyrdom. Still it is a thoroughly well-intentioned book and eminently suitable for invalids.

Mr. Foskett’s poems are very serious and deliberate. One of the best of them, Harold Glynde, is a Cantata for Total Abstainers, and has already been set to music. A Hindoo Tragedy is the story of an enthusiastic Brahmin reformer who tries to break down the prohibition against widows marrying, and there are other interesting tales. Mr. Foskett has apparently forgotten to insert the rhymes in his sonnet to Wordsworth; but, as he tells us elsewhere that ‘Poesy is uninspired by Art,’ perhaps he is only heralding a new and formless form. He is always sincere in his feelings, and his apostrophe to Canon Farrar is equalled only by his apostrophe to Shakespeare.

The Pilgrimage of Memory suffers a good deal by being printed as poetry, and Mr. Barker should republish it at once as a prose work. Take, for instance, this description of a lady on a runaway horse: —

Her screams alarmed the Squire, who seeing the peril of his daughter, rode frantic after her. I saw at once the danger, and stepping from the footpath, show’d myself before the startled animal, which forthwith slackened pace, and darting up adroitly, I seized the rein, and in another moment, had released the maiden’s foot, and held her, all insensible, within my arms. Poor girl, her head and face were sorely bruised, and I tried hard to staunch the blood which flowed from many a scalp-wound, and wipe away the dust that disfigured her lovely features. In another moment the Squire was by my side. ‘Poor child,’ he cried, alarmed, ‘is she dead?’ ‘No, sir; not dead, I think,’ said I, ‘but sorely bruised and injured.’

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See A ‘Jolly’ Art Critic, page 112.