John Cameron Grant has christened himself 'England's Empire Poet,'
and, lest we should have any doubts upon the subject, tells us that he
'dare not lie,' a statement which in a poet seems to show a great want of
courage. Protection and Paper-Unionism are the gods of Mr. Grant's
idolatry, and his verse is full of such fine fallacies and masterly
misrepresentations that he should be made Laureate to the Primrose League
at once. Such a stanza as--

Ask the ruined Sugar-worker if he loves the foreign beet--
Rather, one can hear him answer, would I see my children eat--

would thrill any Tory tea-party in the provinces, and it would be
difficult for the advocates of Coercion to find a more appropriate or a
more characteristic peroration for a stump speech than

We have not to do with justice, right depends on point of view,
The one question for our thought is, what's our neighbour going to do.

The hymn to the Union Jack, also, would make a capital leaflet for
distribution in boroughs where the science of heraldry is absolutely
unknown, and the sonnet on Mr. Gladstone is sure to be popular with all
who admire violence and vulgarity in literature. It is quite worthy of
Thersites at his best.

Mr. Evans's Caesar Borgia is a very tedious tragedy. Some of the
passages are in the true 'Ercles' vein,' like the following:

CAESAR (starting up).
Help, Michelotto, help! Begone! Begone!
Fiends! torments! devils! Gandia! What, Gandia?
O turn those staring eyes away. See! See
He bleeds to death! O fly! Who are those fiends
That tug me by the throat? O! O! O! O! (Pauses.)

But, as a rule, the style is of a more commonplace character. The other
poems in the volume are comparatively harmless, though it is sad to find
Shakespeare's 'Bacchus with pink eyne' reappearing as 'pinky-eyed
Silenus.'

The Cross and the Grail is a collection of poems on the subject of
temperance. Compared to real poetry these verses are as 'water unto
wine,' but no doubt this was the effect intended. The illustrations are
quite dreadful, especially one of an angel appearing to a young man from
Chicago who seems to be drinking brown sherry.

Juvenal in Piccadilly and The Excellent Mystery are two fierce social
satires and, like most satires, they are the product of the corruption
they pillory. The first is written on a very convenient principle. Blank
spaces are left for the names of the victims and these the reader can
fill up as he wishes.

Must--bluster,--give the lie,
--wear the night out,--sneer!

is an example of this anonymous method. It does not seem to us very
effective. The Excellent Mystery is much better. It is full of clever
epigrammatic lines, and its wit fully atones for its bitterness. It is
hardly a poem to quote but it is certainly a poem to read.

The Chronicle of Mites is a mock-heroic poem about the inhabitants of a
decaying cheese who speculate about the origin of their species and hold
learned discussions upon the meaning of evolution and the Gospel
according to Darwin.