he silences bend thro' the loneliness, listening
To the eloquent brasses that burn at our feet,
With holy signs glistening.

This is the worst form of Browningese. Exactly what Mrs. Aitken meant
by it she probably knows as little as any of us; but we would humbly
suggest to her that one does not _hear_ anything bend, unless it be
of a creaking nature, like an old tree, and that is rather opposed
to one's idea of "silences," vague as our notions of that plural
noun are. Why one "silence" could not serve her turn is one of those
Dundrearyan conundrums that no fellow can find out. And, while we are
about it, we should like to know whether it is the silences or the
loneliness or "we" that listen to the eloquent brasses, and to inquire
mildly why the poet threw away the opportunity to say the "brazen
eloquences," which would have been novel and striking, and quite
in the vein of her great original. If Mrs. Browning can talk about
"broken sentiency" and "elemental strategies," why should not Mrs.
Aitken aspire to hear the silences bend? To do her justice, she does
not use such expressions very often--her style is usually simple and
comprehensible--but she does sometimes make the mistake of confounding
incomprehensibility and power. She has some pretty descriptions of
Nature here and there, and one or two of her ballads are very good,
especially that called "A Story of Tours;" but her sonnets are none
of them constructed after the genuine Italian model, and generally
end with a couplet. Her blank verse is the worst of all. The most
ambitious poem in the book is that called "A Day in the Life of Mary
Stuart," a dramatic poem in three scenes, dated the last of January,
1567. It contains a scene between the queen and her maidens, a scene
with the Presbyterian deputies, and a scene with Bothwell, wherein she
incites him to the murder of Darnley. It is unfortunate that the poem
should have appeared in the same year with Swinburne's _Bothwell_,
that magnificent study of the character of Mary Stuart. The characters
in Mrs. Aitken's sketch are weak and thin, and the verse intolerable.
She divides the most inseparable phrases to make out her measure,
and constantly ends the lines with a preposition. No torturing of the
voice can make verse of such sentences as these:

He bids
Your grace deny Lord Bothwell's wish to be
Made member of the council, and if so
Be you delay, he--

In the scene with