nises in him, with amazement, the counterpart of the vision whereby she has herself been haunted: the result is, "peace and marriage rites;" and thus the story ends happily.

We have followed the plot too closely thus far to admit any place by the way for examination of the characters. But we must notice the singularly skilful conception and treatment of character in this poem. Let the reader for a moment conceive to himself any one of the characters, otherwise than precisely as they are sketched in by the author, and he will at once perceive what would be the disastrous effect of the slightest change in the delineation of these light but animated outlines. Let Zariades, instead of a hardy emulator of Cyrus, be a poetic dreamer, and he will lose the very marrow of the dramatic interest with which the author has animated the image of him. Let Argiope manifest a single attribute which may detract from the shamefaced modesty with which the author has invested her, and the whole love-story will immeasurably lose not only in purity but in depth of conception.

We regret that our space will not allow us to notice at much length the best poem in the book, which is, beyond all question, that of Death and Sisyphus.' Short narrative verse is, in fact, a much fitter vehicle for humour than for sentiment and pathos; and the grim grotesque humour of this poem, which is of a very high order, place it, in our estimation, immeasurably above all the others in the volume. Here, too, the lifegiving touches with which the dead materials of an old legend have been reorganised, and wrought into the vivid image of a powerful conception, are even more apparent than in the preceding poem; and they certainly deserve unqualified commendation.

The practical effect upon mankind of the temporary suspension

VOL. XCIX.-NO. DCVII.

Having cheated both men and gods, outwitting with imperturbably joyous audacity Death, Hermes, Pluto, and Zeus himself, Sisyphus, at the end of a long and prosperous reign, dies, the admired founder of a flourishing civilisation.

"And for a while, because his children reigned,

Men praised his fortunes, nor condemned his sins;

Wise bards but called him, 'Craftiest of mankind,'

Proud rulers, 'The most blest.' "But when his line was with the things no more,

And to revile the old race pleased the

new,

All his misdeeds rose, lifelike, from his tomb,

And spoke from living tongues; "And awful legends of some sentence grim,

Passed on his guilty soul in Tartarus, Floated, like vapours, from the nether

deep,

And tinged the sunlit air. "But by a priest in Saïs I was told

A tale, not known in Greece, of this man's doom,

That when the Thracian Orpheus, in the shades,

Sought his Eurydice,

Slaves work in chains, and to the clank they sing.'

Said Orpheus, 'Slaves still hope!' "And could I strain to heave up the huge stone,

Did I not hope that it would reach the
height?

There penance ends, and dawn Elysian
fields.'

'But if it never reach ?'

"The Thracian sighed, as looming thro' the mist

The stone came whirling back. 'Fool,'
said the ghost,
"Then mine, at worst, is everlasting
hope.'

Again uprose the stone."

The author of this remarkable poem has proved that he is well able to light his torch at the merest spark. The merit of 'Sisyphus,' which is a powerful and thoroughly original conception admirably worked out, is greatly increased by the exceedingly small compass of the poem. An author must be gifted with rare and highly trained powers for the delineation of character, who can succeed, by the help of only twenty-four small pages of large print, in enabling the reader so thoroughly to realise the existence of an imaginary personage as that it shall thenceforth live, in his memory and experience, as an actual and intimate acquaintance. 'Sisyphus,' moreover, is a perfectly typical character, belonging sui generis to a very high order of poetic creation; and whatever may be the fate of the rest of the volume in which it now appears, we are inclined to think that this poem will live among the best efforts of its author's genius.

"The Wife of Miletus' is perhaps the most purely tragic in conception of all the poems contained in this little book; but we have not left to ourselves either time or space to speak of it. We have to close our remarks with allusion to one of the Tales' of which we think less highly; but we will first strongly express the hope that the samples of the book which we have already given may induce our readers to judge of it

and of our criticism for themselves. We have too great a respect for the well-acquired reputation of a writer who has richly and lastingly adorned our literature and language, not to assume, a priori, that where we object to some parts of his workmanship there is every reason why we should be scrupulous in sifting, and diffident in expressing our objection.

Sir Edward may certainly be assured it is with no captious impatience, and in no hostile mood, that we wonderingly inquire what possible merit he can attribute to verses such as the following:

"Many wonders on the ocean

By the moonlight may be seen.
Under moonlight on the Euxine
Rose the blessed silver isle,
"As Leonymus of Croton,

At the Pythian God's behest,
Steered among the troubled waters

To the tranquil spirit-land;" and so on. We cannot, for the life of us, conceive in what these stanzas differ from the commonest rhymed metre, except in the absence of rhyme, nor what is gained by the absence of rhyme in an essentially sing-song stanza of this kind. Anyhow, the metre is not new, and is not even a "novel combination of sound." Nay, it belongs to the vulgarest and tritest family of English metres. It is absolutely identical with that of the well-known ballad, beginning,

"When near Portobello lying

Our triumphant navy rode;" and with a host of other similar, and not very classical, strains. Out of many such, one happens to recur to our mind just as we write this, recalled irresistibly by the kindred tune of the stanzas we have just quoted. We will venture to print the rhymed and unrhymed verses one after the other, and ask our readers whether they can detect any difference of metre between the two"Many wonders on the ocean

By the moonlight may be seen.
Under moonlight on the Euxine
Rose the blessed silver isle."

SIR E. B. LYTTON.

We should, however, be thoroughly ashamed of any desire or attempt to taunt a great writer for a small fault (if fault it be). We conceive that there can be only one universally applicable canon of criticism, and it is this: that whilst, on the one hand, no number or perfection of second-rate qualities of genius can possibly impress a first-rate character upon any work of art; so, on the other hand, no deficiency of second-rate qualities can deprive of its first-rate character a work of art in which a firstrate quality of genius is evinced. Critics, therefore, who mean well by the public should be careful and patient in their examination of essentials, and equally careful not to exaggerate in one way or the other the importance of minor beauties and minor defects. It is to the

utter neglect of this very simple rule that we owe a century of false and meretricious criticism about the Caraccis, and much more than a century of comparative ignorance about Perugino. The poem from which we have last quoted is the only one of the kind in the volume of Lost Tales of Miletus,' and we think that the book would lose nothing by the omission of it in a future edition; for the moral of the poem is not very new, being only a development of Dryden's line

"None but the brave deserve the fair;" and the details are not particularly picturesque or striking. But, even if our general objection to the unrhymed metres in this book be worth more than we are disposed to make of it, that is an objection which sinks into comparative insignificance beside the great creative power, the delicate constructive faculty, the grace and humour, which are apparent in almost every page

of these poems. For success in his peculiar treatment of the subjects he has chosen, Sir E. Lytton is indeed exceptionally well qualified. These poems are written in the full maturity of their author's scholarship and taste, and with a highly cultivated command of mechanical faculty. It is impossible not to feel that, if in some respects the habit of thought and expression engendered by long cultivation of that kind of art which is the special province of a great novelist, has been perhaps somewhat prejudicial to his success in verse, in many other respects it has enabled him to bring to the construction of these short narrative poems powers quite unrivalled by any other writer.

What may be the ultimate position assigned to this, his last book, among the many works of its distinguished author, we will not venture to prophesy. We think that the poem of 'Sisyphus' must always live as a work of great genius. We have no expectation that the metres in which the book is written will find imitators; although we certainly think that its manifold and undoubted merits, taken altogether, ought greatly to increase the reputation

With

of its author as a poet. scholars, and with all readers of verse whose literary appetite is delicate and refined rather than robust, and better pleased by the sort of mental food which soothes and satisfies a cultivated taste, than by such fare as needs for its digestion a strong positive hunger for poetic nutriment, we cannot but think that the 'Lost Tales of Miletus,' with its calm and graceful but somewhat scholastic utterances, must always be a great favourite. Altogether, the book is one well worthy to have occupied the learned leisure of one of the greatest and most richly cultivated of English authors, whose genius, having previously found relief for its more vehement and passionate forces in works of broader compass and stronger substance, has worthily attained that dignified placidity which best befits the authorship of such a work. It will, in any case, add one more to the many admirable evidences which already exist of its author's various faculty and large accomplishment. And, this being the case, though it may add little or nothing to his general popularity as a writer, Sir Edward Lytton may, we think, be well satisfied to have written it.

MR ASHBURTON went away from Lucilla's side, thinking to come back again, and clear everything up; but he did not come back. Though he heard nothing, and saw nothing, that could throw any distinct light on the state of her mind, yet instinct came to his aid, it is to be supposed, in the matter. He did not return: and Lucilla sat on her sofa with her hands clasped together to support her, and her heart leaping in her very mouth. She was in a perfect frenzy of suspense, listening with her whole heart and soul; but that did not prevent the same crowd of thoughts which had been persecuting her for twenty-four hours from keeping up their wild career as before. What reason had she to suppose that "any one" had arrived? Who could arrive in that accidental way, with out a word of warning? And what possible excuse had she to offer to herself for sending the new member for Carlingford—a man so excellent and honourable and eligible-away? The minutes, or rather the seconds, passed over Miss Marjoribanks like hours, as she sat thus waiting, not daring to stir lest the slightest movement might keep from her ears some sound from below, till at last the interval seemed so long that her heart began to sink, and her excitement to fail. It could not be any one-if it had been any one, something more must have come of it before now. It must have been Lydia Richmond coming to see her sister next door, or somebody connected with the election, or

When she got as far as this, Lucilla's heart suddenly mounted up again with a spring into her ears. She heard neither words nor voice, but she heard something which had as great an effect upon her as either

could have had. On the landing half-way up the stairs, there had stood in Dr Marjoribanks's house from time immemorial a little oldfashioned table, with a large china bowl upon it, in which the cards of visitors were placed. It was a great bowl, and it was always full, and anybody rushing up-stairs in a reckless way might easily upset table and cards and all in their progress. This was what happened while Lucilla sat listening. There was a rumble, a crash, and a sound as of falling leaves, and it made her heart, as we have said, jump into her ears. "It is the table and all the cards," said Lucilla-and in that moment her composure came back to her as by a miracle. She unclasped her hands, which she had been holding pressed painfully together by way of supporting herself, and she gave a long sigh of unutterable relief, and her whirl of thought stopped and cleared up with an instantaneous rapidity. Everything seemed to be explained by that sound; and there never was a greater change upon the looks and feelings of any one in this world than that which passed upon the looks and feelings of Lucilla, in the interval between the drawing up of that cab and the rush of Tom Marjoribanks at the drawing-room door.

For after the commotion on the staircase Lucilla had no further doubt on the subject. She even had the strength to get up to meet him, and hold out her hands to him by way of welcome-but found herself, before she knew how, in the arms of a man with a beard, who was so much changed in his own person that he ventured to kiss her, which was a thing Tom Marjoribanks, though her cousin, had never dared to do before. He