HENLEY has done well in including such pieces as, for instance,
HERBERT's "_Memento Mori_," CURRAN's "_The Deserter_," SWINBURNE's
"_The Oblation_," and ALFRED AUSTIN's "_Is Life Worth Living_?" If Mr.
HENLEY, or anybody else who happens to possess a personal equation,
will point out to me the heroic quality in these poems, I shall feel
deeply grateful. And how, in the name of all that is or ever was
heroic, has "_Auld Lang Syne_" crept into this collection of heroic
verse? As for Mr. ALFRED AUSTIN, I cannot think by what right he
secures a place in such a compilation. I have rarely read a piece
of his which did not contain at least one glaring infelicity. In
"_Is Life Worth Living_?" he tells us of "blithe herds," which (in
compliance with the obvious necessities of rhyme, but for no other
reason)

"Wend homeward with unweary feet,
Carolling like the birds."

Further on we find that

"England's trident-sceptre roams
Her territorial seas,"

merely because the unfortunate sceptre has to rhyme somehow to
"English homes."

But I have a further complaint against Mr. HENLEY. He presumes, in the
most fantastic manner, to alter the well-known titles of celebrated
poems. "_The Isles of Greece_" is made to masquerade as "The Glory
that was Greece"; "_Auld Lang Syne_" becomes "The Goal of Life," and
"_Tom Bowline_" is converted into "The Perfect Sailor." This surely
(again I use the words of Mr. HENLEY) "is a thing preposterous, and
distraught." On the whole, I cannot think that Mr. HENLEY has done
his part well. His manner is bad. His selection, it seems to me, is
open to grave censure, on broader grounds than the mere personally
equational of which he speaks, and his choppings, and sub-titles,
and so forth, are not commendable. The irony of literary history has
apparently ordained that Mr. HENLEY should first patronise, and then
"cut," both CAMPBELL and MACAULAY. Was the shade of MACAULAY disturbed
when he learnt that Mr. HENLEY considered his "_Battle of Naseby_"
both "vicious and ugly"?

BARON DE BOOK-WORMS & CO.

* * * * *

NOTICE.--Rejected Communications or Contributions, whether MS.,
Printed Matter, Drawings, or Pictures of any description, will in no
case be returned, not even when accompanied by a Stamped and Addressed
Envelope, Cover, or Wrapper. To this rule there will be no exception.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Punch, Or The London Charivari, V