side of the new school is more noticeable here than the Italian and mediæval tendencies of other pre-Raphaelite poets. A grave and sombre force makes itself manifest side by side with a somewhat uncongenial sentimental simplicity. The constructions are studiously prosaic; the choice of incidents and ideas would fain appear obvious and unstudied; the metre seems left to itself. The conception of poetry, as though it were transcription or excision of casual passages from life—a direct presentation of that which exists merely for the sake of record or repetition-has never been carried further. But Art, driven out with ignominy, will yet return, and there is nothing so artificial as artlessness. While mankind had few thoughts, a scanty vocabulary, and nerves not as yet charged with inherited subtilty, and haunted by the phantoms of countless half-forgotten cadences, this vivid and energetic simplicity was the inevitable form of artistic utterance. But its reproduction in civilized times is the most far-sought and artificial of conscious expedients. A tremulous intensity of passion, born of modern nerves, sets the hard ridges of the old ballad-outlines quivering. The new wine and the old bottles do not agree.

دو

So far as Mr. Woolner's poem is concerned, much of what we have said applies only to the portion originally published in "The Germ.' There are passages in the revised work of pure though always weighty melody, and it is distinguished throughout from most productions of our time by a grave and noble reflectiveness which the sculptor has taught us to expect in the poet.

Poetry was by far the strongest element in "The Germ." Thus Mr. Ford Madox Brown, who is known to us as the painter of "Lear and Cordelia," contributes, besides an etching in the third number, a sonnet in the first. This poem is not very remarkable, except as showing the unity of sentiment which inspired the circle. Boccaccio, the poet says:

“When first the love-earned royal Mary press'd

To her smooth cheek his pale brows, passion-worn,
'Tis said, he, by her grace nigh frenzied, torn
By longings unattainable, addressed

To his chief friend most strange misgivings, lest

Some madness in his brain had thence been born."

So the artist, he concludes, when Nature has been revealed to him, pines with illimitable passion for her. Men who wrote and felt like this, with whatever incidental extravagance, were bringing a new spirit into English art.

The author of the "Angel in the House" has two poems in "The Germ," neither of which, however, show his special excellences. The perfect preciseness of thought and observation,

the delicate tournure, alternately gay and sober, and the gnomic sagacity which make many passages in his poems live in the memory of all appreciative readers, should have earned by this time a respectful indulgence for the facile platitude into which he too often falls.

For the rest, Mr. Patmore is fitly placed among pre-Raphaelite poets, by virtue of his undiscriminating love of detail, and what we must call an affectation of homely simplicity. His musical ear betrays him into delightful inconsistencies sufficiently often to redeem these faults, and to give him a place apart among modern poets.

Some of the poems which Miss Rossetti contributed to "The Germ," have been embodied by her in subsequent volumes. Among these some have become deservedly well-known, as, for example, the magnificent abridged paraphrase of Ecclesiastes :"I said of laughter: It is vain;

Of mirth, I said: What profits it ?" &c.

and the perfect little song:

"Oh! roses for the flush of youth,

And laurel for the perfect prime;

But pluck an ivy branch for me,
Grown old before my time.

Oh! violets for the grave of youth,

And bay for those dead in their prime;
Give me the withered leaves I chose

Before in the old time."

Miss Rossetti is one of those writers in whom an exquisite sense of propriety and a properly artistic faculty combine to produce work so perfect in its degree that criticism has little to say to it, except to recognise the limitations of scope and subject, the instinctive observance of which has led to this result. Thus Miss Rossetti has never dealt with the greatest subjects, except as modes of individual experience, nor has she attempted the great metres or the great forms of poetry. For penetrating force of imagination, or even for what we choose to call masculine" power of thinking, her works cannot be compared with those of Mrs. Browning, and yet we venture to think that the simple fact of obedience to the inevitable conditions of the art promises the former a more enduring recognition than the latter. So long as the English tongue exists, the sculpturesque finish of the two poems cited above must find admirers.

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"The Germ" was indeed a nest of young poets. Mr. James Collinson has an etching and poem, each illustrating the other, in the second number, which furnish us with the only trace that we have in this volume of Neo-Catholic pietism asso

ciating itself with the artistic and literary tendencies of the school. The wonder is, not that one or two of the set followed this direction, but that the whole strength of the Oxford movement (not yet in decisive decline) did not come to reinforce them. The spiritual side of Puseyism had been preached with a heavenly charm by the poets and painters of the early Renaissance in the

"Season

Of Art's spring-birth so dim and dewy;"

but the Church party, for the most part, rubbed brasses and measured mouldings, and their souls were satisfied. Mr. Collinson's drawing is subscribed-Ex ore infantium et lactentium perfecisti laudem. The child Jesus crowned with blossoming thorns, and holding a slight wooden cross, is seated by the seashore receiving the homage of children; an infant held by a little girl embraces him. In spite of conspicuous, and even ludicrous defects in drawing and arrangement, the delicate "purist" feeling of early Italian art is exquisitely rendered. The accompanying poem shows the same kind of merit even more attractively. Seven legends of our Lord's infancy are related, each prefiguring one of the phases of the Passion. This is the passage which describes the subject of the drawing:And, one bright summer eve, The child sat by himself upon the beach, Whilst Joseph's barge freighted with heavy wood, Bound homewards, slowly laboured thro' the calm. And as he watched the long waves swell and break, Run glistening to his feet, and sink again, Three children, and then two, with each an arm Around the other, throwing up their songsSuch happy songs as only children knowCame by the place where Jesus sat alone.

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But when they saw his thoughtful face they ceased,
And looking at each other, drew near him;
While one who had upon his head a wreath
Of hawthorn flowers, and in his hand a reed,
Put these both from him, saying "Here is one
Whom you shall all prefer instead of me

To be our king;" and then he placed the wreath
On Jesus' brow, who meekly bowed his head.
And when he took the reed, the children knelt,
And cast their simple offerings at his feet,
And, almost wondering why they loved him so,
Kissed him with reverence, promising to yield
Grave fealty.

We are by no means disposed to attach very high importance to the kind of interest which this passage possesses, but we can

hardly recal another example in which the appropriate tone has been so delicately maintained. Longfellow's treatment of a similar subject in the "Golden Legend" furnishes an instructive contrast. It is perhaps a proof of culpable ignorance, but we confess that Mr. James Collinson's name is otherwise unknown to us.

"Viola and Olivia" is the subject of a rather ludicrously stiff and unskilful drawing in the fourth number, by Mr. W. H. Deverell, another name with which we have no further acquaintance. The artist's accompanying poem might be similarly described; but there is a fine set of three sonnets by him in the second number. In fact, the average excellence of the poetry is surprising, and we have not space to quote or criticise more than a small portion of what we admire.

Mr. William Bell Scott's pictures have received more recognition than his poems, though, as we venture to think, he is far more a master of poetry than of painting. A singular mystical epic, in the metaphysical manner of Shelley, has hitherto completely failed in attracting public attention. It is more wonderful that the volume of miscellaneous "Poems by a Painter," published later, has remained so completely unknown that a brother artist, presumably in ignorance, could afterwards adopt the title for his more popular collection of verses. Some of the sonnets in Mr. Scott's volume are admirable examples of this highly artificial form, in which our literature closely rivals the Italian and excels the French-a form, we may remark in passing, which can only become easy and popular in a language thoroughly worked and penetrated by a great literature. There is hardly a single good sonnet in German.

From Mr. Scott's "Morning Sleep," in "The Germ,” we will quote a few lines :—

"Let the day come or go: there is no let

Or hindrance to the indolent wilfulness
Of fantasy and dream-land.

Place and time

And bodily weight are for the wakeful only.
Now they exist not: life is like that cloud,
Floating, poised happily in mid-air, bathed
In a sustaining halo, soft yet clear,
Voyaging on, though to no bourne—all heaven
Its own wide home alike, earth far below,
Fading still further, further. Yet we see,
In fancy, its green fields, its towers and towns
Smoking with life, its roads with traffic thronged,
And tedious travellers within iron cars,

Its rivers with their ships and labourers,

To whose raised eye, as, stretched upon the sward,

They may enjoy some interval of rest,
That little cloud appears no living thing,
Although it moves, and changes as it moves."
"The mild

Maternal influence of Nature thus

Ennobles both the sentient and the dead;

The human heart is as an altar wreathed,

On which old wine pours, streaming o'er the leaves,
And down the symbol-carved sides."

The following lines are from a sonnet in "The Germ," on "Early Aspirations" :

"Time passes-passes! The aspiring flame

Of Hope shrinks down; the white flower Poesy
Breaks on its stalk, and from its earth-turn'd eye
Drop sleepy tears, instead of that sweet dew,

Rich with inspiring odours, insect wings
Drew from its leaves with every changing sky,

While its young innocent petals unsunned grew."

With a carelessness of finish which almost amounts to slovenliness, we find in these lines traces of a rare poetical gift, manifesting itself especially in continuous strains of high meditation such as have not often wanted appreciating admirers in this country.

His

"The Germ" was edited by Mr. William Rossetti, who appeared in it besides in two characters, both of which he has since sustained with distinction, those of poet and critic. translation of Dante gives him a title to the former name; and though we cannot entirely accept the principle on which it is done, and are therefore necessarily disposed to find fault with some of the details, yet even its defects (as we regard them) are such eccentricities as none but a man of great ability could commit, while its fidelity and the literary power shown in it are beyond question. As a critic Mr. W. Rossetti is now known to the public by his admirable volume of "Essays on Art," reprinted last year, and by his review of Mr. Swinburne's poems, which was published with his name shortly after the appearance of the "Poems and Ballads." His poems in "The Germ" show a contempt for form, and a zeal for realism, which we confess make them difficult reading. For example:

"Look at that crab, there! See if you can't haul

His backward progress to this spar of a ship
Thrown up and sunk into the sand here.

Clip

His clipping feelers hard, and give him all

Your hand to gripe at; he'll take care not fall," &c.

But we must not forget that this was written eighteen years