e evening rose,
She sleeps and dreams away,
Soft blended in a unity of rest
All jars, and strifes obscene, and turbulent throes
'Neath the broad benediction of the West--

"Sleeps; and methinks she changes as she sleeps,
And dies, and is a spirit pure;
Lo! on her deck, an angel pilot keeps
His lonely watch secure;
And at the entrance of Heaven's dockyard waits
Till from night's leash the fine-breathed morning leaps
And that strong hand within unbars the gates."

It is very far from being the finest poem in the volume. It has not
the noble humanity of _Catherine Kinrade_--and if this be not a great
poem I know nothing about poetry--nor the rapture of _Jessie_, nor the
awful pathos of _Mater Dolorosa_, nor the gentle pathos of _Aber
Stations_, nor the fine religious feeling of _Planting_ and
_Disguises_. But it came so pat to the occasion, and used the occasion
so deftly to take hold of one's sympathy, that these other poems were
read in the very mood that, I am sure, their author would have asked
for them. One has not often such luck in reading--"Never the time and
the place and the author all together," if I may do this violence to
Browning's line. Yet I trust that in any mood I should have had the
sense to pay its meed of admiration to this volume.

Now, having carefully read the opinions of some half-a-dozen
reviewers upon it, I can only wonder and leave the question to my
reader, warning him by no means to miss _Mater Dalorosa_ and
_Catherine Kinrade_. If he remain cold to these two poems, then I
shall still preserve my own opinion.

MR. JOHN DAVIDSON

April 7, 1894. His Plays.

For some weeks now I have been meaning to write about Mr. John
Davidson's "Plays" (Elkin Mathews and John Lane), and always shirking
the task at the last moment. The book is an exceedingly difficult one
to write about, and I am not at all sure that after a few sentences I
shall not stick my hands in my pockets and walk off to something
easier. The recent fine weather has, however, made me desperate. The
windows of the room in which I sit face S. and S.-E.; consequently a
deal of sunshine comes in upon my writing-table. In ninety-nine cases
out of the hundred this makes for idleness; in this, the hundredth
case, it constrains to energy, because it is rapidly bleaching the
puce-colored boards in which Mr. Davidson's plays are bound--and
(which is worse) bleaching t