Festus is fickle, and infirm of purpose, while, Lucifer, a very gentleman-like devil, hasn't the verve or swing of Goethe's Mephistopheles or Milton's Satan. Milton's hero, particularly, usually awakens our sympathies, and we are apt to think, as Lord Thurlow did, that he is "a fine fellow, and ought to win." But Lucifer doesn't stir us. At one time he seems like the personification of evil; at another the slave of his own passions. When he first appears before the throne of heaven it is not like the grand accusing angel in Job, but like a mere suppliant, begging that he may have Festus to try his powers upon. Finally, after a series of travels through the universe with Festus, the latter seems to turn out to be the stronger character, and in the end Lucifer and his hosts are reformed and regenerated and take their places once more among the heavenly hosts.

These are the weak points in the construction of this highly poetical drama. The theology and philosophy are also somewhat threadbare and shopworn for these days, as the theology and philosophy of a youth of twenty-three more than half a century ago would be likely to be, and this further tends to this underestimation of the poem. But when this is said there is still much left to be said in praise of it, of its beautiful imagery and

noble aspirations. There are shining gems scattered throughout its pages that kindle and thrill He describes a poet :

us.

He wrote amid the ruins of his heart,

They were his throne and theme; like some lone king
Who tells the story of the land he lost

To shine. He knew himself a bard ordained.

Here is a fine simile:

Yet truth and falsehood meet in seeming like
The falling leaf and shadow on the pool's face.

And this:

Trifles like these make up the present time;
The Iliad and the Pyramids the past.

Festus has many love affairs, is fickle, and passes from one to another as a bee passes from flower to flower. Angela, Clara, Helen, Elissa, by turns, attract him, and by turns are abandoned but these adventures, if such they may be called, give occasion for some of the finest passages in the poem.

In the description of nature, of night, the stars, the moon, the heavens, there are some truly noble and poetic lines :

How strangely fair

Yond round still star, which looks half-suffering from,
And half-rejoicing in its own strong fire;
Making itself a lonelihood of light.

Here is a picture of rare beauty:

Before us shone the sun,

The angel waved her hand ere she began,

As bidding earth be still. The birds ceased singing,
And the trees breathing, and the lake smoothed down
Each shining wrinklet, and the wind drew off.

Time leant him o'er his scythe, and, listening, wept.

And again :

We never see the stars

Till we can see naught but them. So with truth.

Mr. Bailey wrote two other long poems, "The Angel World" and "The Mystic," which never met with much favor. In 1889 on the fiftieth anniversary of the first publication of " Festus," he published a semi-centennial edition of the poem in which he incorporated parts of his other poems, not greatly to the advantage of any of them.

AUSTIN DOBSON'S CAREER.

THERE are few literary careers more enviable than that of Austin Dobson.

He is an example of what England does for her literary men of genius-or, at least, of sane genius.

Mr. Dobson is a poet and essayist and has written delightful verse and charming essays. He seems to have justly estimated his own powers, and has never attempted Homeric flights with the wings of Theocritus. He has kept himself strictly within a particular corner of English literature and has been content to master that, leaving the larger fields of study and inquiry to other adventurers. The result is that he is one of the most popular, most entertaining, and most accurate writers in his domain that we have ever had.

Mr. Dobson was born at Plymouth, England, in January, 1840, and after an education at private schools he became a clerk in the government

board of trade in 1856, where, by gradual steps, he rose to be the chief. After forty-five years of service he now retires on a pension, while he also receives a pension from the literary fund.

It was in 1873 that he first attracted public attention in a volume of verses entitled "Vignettes in Rhyme.' They were so pleasing, so fresh, so novel in style to English readers that they attracted immediate attention and for a time seemed to set a fashion in verse. He was one of the first, if not the very first, of the younger school of English poets to make the old French style of poetry-the triolet, the rondel, the villanelle, and the ballade-familiar and delightful to English ears, while his vers de société challenged, in lightness of touch, even Mr. Locker-Lampson. Verses have rarely tripped to a daintier measure than those of Mr. Dobson.

His pictures are genre, his themes are common and of everyday life, but he clothes them with an auroral charm that makes them seem evanescent and elusive. His verses are so light and evasive that they can be subjected to no analysis. You cannot say the beauty is here, for when you point the finger at the spot, lo! it seems somewhere else. The lines appeal to feeling only. His point of view is never that of the clubman, but always