"Dauntless Angelo,

Who drew the Judgment, in some daring hope
That, seeing it, the gods could not depart
From so divine a pattern."

"Sad Alighieri, like a waning moon

Setting in storm Lehind a grove of bays."

The descriptions which follow, in pages 91 and C2—of Milton and Shakspeare-are very eloquent, but not, it appears to us, very characteristic. They are splendid evasions of their subjects. Reading Milton is not like swimming the Alps, as an ocean sinking and swelling with the billows; it is rather like trying to fly to heaven, side by side with an angel who is at full speed, and does not even see his companion-so eagerly is he straining at the glorious goal which is fixing his eye, and from afar flushing his cheek. Nor do we much admire this:

"Either his muse

Was the recording angel, or that hand
Cherubie which fills up the Book of Life,
Caught what the last relaxing gripe let fall
By a death-bed at Stratford, and henceforth
Holds Shakspeare's pen."

No, no, dear Sydney Yendys, Shakspeare was no cherub, or seraph either; he was decidedly an "earth spirit," or rather, he was just honest, play-acting, ale-drinking Will of Stratford, with the most marvellous daguerreotypic brow that ever man possessed, and with an immense fancy, imagination, and subtle, untrained intellect besides. He knew well a "Book of Life;" but it was not "the Lamb's!"-it was the book of the wondrous, living, loving, hating, maddening, laughing, weeping heart of man. Call him rather a diver

than a cherub, or, better still, with Hazlitt and Scott, compare him to that magician in the eastern tale who had the power of shooting his soul into all other souls and bodies, and of looking at the universe through all human eyes. We are, by this comparison of Shakspeare to an angel, irresistibly reminded of Michael Lambourne in "Kenilworth," who, after in vain trying to enact Arion, at last tears off his vizard, and cries Cog's bones!" He was none of Arion, or Orion either, but honest Mike Lambourne, that had been drinking Her Majes ty's health from morning till midnight. Lambourne was just

as like Orion, or his namesake the archangel Michael, as Shakspeare like a cherubic recorder.

Now for another cluster of minor, but exquisite beauties ere we come to give two or three superb passages :—

"Sere leaf, that quiverest through the sad-still air;

Sere leaf, that waverest down the sluggish wind;

Sere leaf, that whirlest on the autumn gust,
Free in the ghustly anarchy of death:
The sudden gust that, like a headsman wild,
Uplifteth beauty by her golden hair,

To show the world that she is dead indeed."

"The bare hill top

Shines near above us; I feel like a child
Nursed on his grandsire's knee, that longs to stroke
The bald bright forehead; shall we climb ?"
"She look'd in her surprise

As when the Evening Star, ta' en unaware,
While fearless she pursues across the Heaven
Her Lover-Sun, and on a sudden stands
Confest in the pursuit, before a world
Upgazing, in her maiden innocence

Disarms us, and so looks, that she becomes
A worship evermore."

"The order'd pomp and sacred dance of things."
"This is that same hour

That I have seen before me as a star

Seen from a rushing comet through the black
And forward night, which orbs, and orbs, and orbs,
Till that which was a shining spot in space

Flames out between us and the universe,

And burns the heavens with glory."

We quoted his description of Night once before from MS.

We give it again, however :

"And lo! the last strange sister, but though last,

Elder and haught, called Night on earth, in heaven
Nameless, for in her far youth she was given,
Pale as she is, to pride, and did bedeck
Her bosom with innumerable gems.

And God, He said, Let no man look on her
For ever; and, begirt with this strong spell,
The Moon in her wan hand, she wanders forth,
Seeking for some one to behold her beauty;
And whersoe'er she cometh, eyelids close.
And the world sleeps."

This description has been differently estimated. Some have called it magnificent, and others fantastic; some a matchless

gem, and others a colossal conceit. But we think there can be but one opinion about the following picture of Evening. It seems to us as exquisitely beautiful as anything in Spenser, Wordsworth, or Shelly :

Here the description should have stopped, and here we stop it, wishing that the author had. But it is curious and characteristic, not so much of the genius as of the temperament (or rather of bodily sufferings influencing that temperament) of this gifted poet, that he often sinks and falls on the very threshold of perfection. Another word, and all were gained, to the very measure and stature of Miltonic excellence; but the word comes not, or the wrong word comes instead; and as Yendys, like the tiger, takes no second spring, the whole effect is often lost. We notice the same in Shelley, Keats, and especially in Leigh Hunt, who has made and spoiled many of the finest poetic pictures in the world. Wordsworth, Tennyson, and Alexander Smith, are signal in this, that all their set descriptions and pet passages are finished to the last trembling articulation; complete even to a comma. Yendys has, perhaps, superior, or equal genius; he has also an equal will and desire to elaborate; but, alas! while the spirit is always willing, the flesh is often weak.

Speaking of the Resurrection to Amy, Balder says:

"My childhood's dream. Is it a dream? For thou

Art such a thing as one might think to see

Upon a footstone, sitting in the sun,

Beside a broken grave."

"I have been like

A prophet fallen on his prostrate face
Upon the hill of fire."

Such is the prophet above. Mark him now, as he comes down to mankind :

"In the form

Of manhood I will get me down to man!

As one goes down from Alpine top with snows
Upon his head, I, who have stood so long

On other Alps, will go down to my race,
Snow'd on with somewhat out of Divine air;
And merely walking through them with a step
God-like to music, like the golden sound

Of Phebus' shoulder'd arrows, I will shake
The laden manna round me as I shake

Dews from this morning tree."

He has, two or three pages after this, a strange effusion, called the "Song of the Sun," which we predict shall divide opinion still more than his "Night." Some will call it worthy of Goethe; others will call it a forced extravaganza, a half-frenzied imitation of Shelley's "Cloud." We incline to a somewhat intermediate notion. At the first reading, it seemed to us to bear a suspicious resemblance, not to Shelley's "Cloud," but to that tissue of noisy nonsense (where, as there was no reason, there ought at least to have been rhyme), Warren's "Lily and the Bec." Hear this, for instance. Mark, it is Sol that speaks :

"Love, love, love, how beautiful, oh love!

Art thou well-awaken'd, little flower?
Are thine eyelids open, little flower?
Are they cool with dew, oh little flower?
Ringdove, Ringdove,

This is my golden finger;

Between the upper branches of the pine

Come forth, come forth, and sing unto my day."

Who will encore the sun in such ditties as these? But he has some more vigorous strains, worthy almost of that voice wherewith Goethe, in his "Prologue to Faust," has represented him making "music to the spheres :"

"I will spend day among you like a king!
Your water shall be wine because I reign!
Arise, my hand is open, it is day!

Rise! as men strike a bell, and make it music,
So have I struck the earth, and made it day.

As one blows a trumpet through the valleys,
So from my golden trumpet I blow day.
White-favor'd day is sailing on the sea,
And, like a sudden harvest in the land,
The windy land is waving gold with day!
I have done my task;

Do yours. And what is this that I have given,
And wherefore? Look ye to it! As ye can,
Be wise and foolish to the end. For me,
I under all heavens go forth, praising God."

Well sung, old Baal! tian in these latter days. less mystic, and clearer although Yendys has not.

either of thee or himself!

Thou hast become a kind of ChrisBut we have seen a far stronger, song attributed to thy lips before, His, as a whole, is not worthy

But what beautiful words are these about the sun's darling -Summer-immediately below this Sun-song?

We quote but one more of these random and ransomless gems:

"The Sublime and beautiful,
Eternal twins, one dark, one fair;

She leaning on her grand heroic brother,
As in a picture of some old romaunt."

We promised next to quote one or two longer passages. We wish we had room for all the description of Chamouni, which, like the scene, is unapproachable the most Miltonic strain since Milton-and this, because it accomplishes its sublime effects merely by sublime thought and image, almost disdaining aught but simple and colloquial words. Yet we must give a few scattered stones from this new Alp in descriptive literature—this, as yet, the masterpiece of its author's genius

"Chamouni, 'mid sternest Alps,

The gentlest valley; bright meandering track
Of summer, when she winds among the snows
From land to land. Behold its fairest field
Beneath the bold-scarr'd forehead of the hills

Low lying, like a heart of sweet desires,
Pulsing all day a living beauty deep
Into the sullen secrets of the rocks,

Tender as Love amid the Destinies

And Terrors; whereabout the great heights stand,
Down-gazing, like a solemn company

Of grey heads met together to look back

Upon a far-fond memory of youth."

"There being old

All days and years they maunder on their thrones