Sharp's collection is very pleasant reading indeed, and the
extracts given from the works of living poetesses are extremely
remarkable, not merely for their absolute artistic excellence, but also
for the light they throw upon the spirit of modern culture.

It is not, however, by any means a complete anthology. Dame Juliana
Berners is possibly too antiquated in style to be suitable to a modern
audience. But where is Anne Askew, who wrote a ballad in Newgate; and
where is Queen Elizabeth, whose 'most sweet and sententious ditty' on
Mary Stuart is so highly praised by Puttenham as an example of
'Exargasia,' or The Gorgeous in Literature? Why is the Countess of
Pembroke excluded? Sidney's sister should surely have a place in any
anthology of English verse. Where is Sidney's niece, Lady Mary Wroth, to
whom Ben Jonson dedicated The Alchemist? Where is 'the noble ladie Diana
Primrose,' who wrote A Chain of Pearl, or a memorial of the peerless
graces and heroic virtues of Queen Elizabeth, of glorious memory? Where
is Mary Morpeth, the friend and admirer of Drummond of Hawthornden? Where
is the Princess Elizabeth, daughter of James I., and where is Anne
Killigrew, maid of honour to the Duchess of York? The Marchioness of
Wharton, whose poems were praised by Waller; Lady Chudleigh, whose lines
beginning--

Wife and servant are the same,
But only differ in the name,

are very curious and interesting; Rachel Lady Russell, Constantia
Grierson, Mary Barber, Laetitia Pilkington; Eliza Haywood, whom Pope
honoured by a place in The Dunciad; Lady Luxborough, Lord Bolingbroke's
half-sister; Lady Mary Wortley Montagu; Lady Temple, whose poems were
printed by Horace Walpole; Perdita, whose lines on the snowdrop are very
pathetic; the beautiful Duchess of Devonshire, of whom Gibbon said that
'she was made for something better than a Duchess'; Mrs. Ratcliffe, Mrs.
Chapone, and Amelia Opie, all deserve a place on historical, if not on
artistic, grounds. In fact, the space given by Mrs. Sharp to modern and
living poetesses is somewhat disproportionate, and I am sure that those
on whose brows the laurels are still green would not grudge a little room
to those the green of whose laurels is withered and the music of whose
lyres is mute.

* * * * *

One of the most powerful and pathetic novels that has recently appeared
is A Village Tragedy by Margaret L. Woods. To find any parallel to this
lurid little story, one must go to Dostoieffski or to Guy de Maupassant.
Not that Mrs. Woods can be said to have taken either of these two great
masters of fiction as her model, but there is something in her work that
recalls their method; she has not a little of their fierce intensity,
their terrible concentration, their passionless yet poignant objectivity;
like them, she seems to allow life to suggest its own mode of
presentation; and, like them, she recognises that a frank acceptance of
the facts of life is the true basis of all modern imitative art. The
scene of Mrs. Woods's story lies in one of the villages near Oxford; the
characters are very few in number, and the plot is extremely simple.