Hole shows
often a rare and exquisite sense of beauty and a marvellous power of
poetic vision, and if he will cultivate the technique of his craft a
little more we have no doubt but that he will some day give us work
worthy to endure. It is true that there is more promise than perfection
in his verse at present, yet it is a promise that seems likely to be
fulfilled.

(1) Stories of Wicklow. By George Francis Armstrong, M.A. (Longmans,
Green and Co.)

(2) Somnia Medici. By John A. Goodchild. Second Series. (Kegan Paul.)

(3) Verses: Translated and Original. By H. E. Keene. (W. H. Allen and
Co.)

(4) Procris and Other Poems. By W. G. Hole. (Kegan Paul.)

SOME NOVELS

(Pall Mall Gazette, April 14, 1886.)

After a careful perusal of 'Twixt Love and Duty, by Mr. Tighe Hopkins, we
confess ourselves unable to inform anxious inquirers who it is that is
thus sandwiched, and how he (or she) got into so unpleasant a
predicament. The curious reader with a taste for enigmas may be advised
to find out for himself--if he can. Even if he be unsuccessful, his
trouble will be repaid by the pleasant writing and clever character
drawing of Mr. Hopkins's tale. The plot is less praiseworthy. The whole
Madeira episode seems to lead up to this dilemma, and after all it comes
to nothing. We brace up our nerves for a tragedy and are treated instead
to the mildest of marivaudage--which is disappointing. In conclusion,
one word of advice to Mr. Hopkins: let him refrain from apostrophising
his characters after this fashion: 'Oh, Gilbert Reade, what are you about
that you dally with this golden chance?' and so forth. This is one of
the worst mannerisms of a bygone generation of story tellers.

Mr. Gallenga has written, as he says, 'a tale without a murder,' but
having put a pistol-ball through his hero's chest and left him alive and
hearty notwithstanding, he cannot be said to have produced a tale without
a miracle. His heroine, too, if we may judge by his descriptions of her,
is 'all a wonder and a wild desire.' At the age of seventeen she 'was
one of the Great Maker's masterpieces . . . a living likeness of the
Dresden Madonna.' One rather shudders to think of what she may become at
forty, but this is an impertinent prying into futurity. She hails from
'Maryland, my Maryland!' and has 'received a careful, if not a superior,
education.' Need we add that she marries the heir to an earldom who, as
aforesaid, has had himself perforated by a pistol-bullet on her behalf?
Mr. Gallenga's division of this book into acts and scenes is not
justified by anything specially dramatic either in its structure or its
method. The dialogue, in truth, is somewhat stilted. Nevertheless, its
first-hand sketches of Roman society are not without interest, and one or
two characters seem to be drawn from nature.

The Life's Mistake which forms the theme of Mrs. Lovett Cameron's two
volumes is not a mistake after all, but results in unmixed felicity; and
as it is brought about by fraud on the part of the hero, this conclusion
is not as moral as it might be. For the rest, the tale is a very
familiar one. Its personages are the embarrassed squire with his
charming daughter, the wealthy and amorous mortgagee, and the sailor
lover who is either supposed to be drowned or falsely represented to be
fickle--in Mrs.