The distinction, we admit, is not
exhaustive, but it seems to be the one that is extremely popular with our
minor poets. Opening at random The Queens Innocent we come across
passages like this:

Full gladly would I sit
Of such a potent magus at the feet,

and this:

The third, while yet a youth,
Espoused a lady noble but not royal,
_One only son who gave him_--Pharamond--

lines that, apparently, rest their claim to be regarded as poetry on
their unnecessary and awkward inversions. Yet this poem is not without
beauty, and the character of Nardi, the little prince who is treated as
the Court fool, shows a delicate grace of fancy, and is both tender and
true. The most delightful thing in the whole volume is a little lyric
called April, which is like a picture set to music.

The Chimneypiece of Bruges is a narrative poem in blank verse, and tells
us of a young artist who, having been unjustly convicted of his wife's
murder, spends his life in carving on the great chimneypiece of the
prison the whole story of his love and suffering. The poem is full of
colour, but the blank verse is somewhat heavy in movement. There are
some pretty things in the book, and a poet without hysterics is rare.

Dr. Dawson Burns's Oliver Cromwell is a pleasant panegyric on the
Protector, and reads like a prize poem by a nice sixth-form boy. The
verses on The Good Old Times should be sent as a leaflet to all Tories of
Mr. Chaplin's school, and the lines on Bunker's Hill, beginning,

I stand on Bunker's towering pile,

are sure to be popular in America.

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.