lk through Paris, in which the author observes, with very
little regularity but--with great force, on the different objects which
present themselves.... Sketching with the hand of a master.... In a
strain of poetry and pathos which we have seldom seen equalled.... An
admirable mirable poet.' (2) _Woman_ is a poem by the Mr. Barrett whom
Shelley names, termed on the title-page 'the Author of _The Heroine._'
It was noticed in the _Quarterly_ for April 1818, the very same number
which contained the sneering critique of _Endymion_. This poem is
written in the heroic metre; and the extracts given do certainly
comprise some telling and felicitous lines. Such are--

'The beautiful rebuke that looks surprise.
The gentle vengeance of averted eyes;'

also (a line which has borne, and may yet bear, frequent re-quoting)

'Last at his cross, and earliest at his grave.'

For critical utterances we have the ensuing:--'A strain of patriotism
pure, ardent, and even sublime.... Versification combining conciseness
and strength with a considerable degree of harmony.... Both talent and
genius.... Some passages of it, and those not a few, are of the first
order of the pathetic and descriptive.' (3) _A Syrian Tale._ Of this
book I have failed to find any trace in the _Quarterly Review_, or in
the Catalogue of the British Museum. (4) Mrs. Lefanu. Neither can I
trace this lady in the _Quarterly_. Mrs. Alicia Lefanu, who is stated to
have been a sister of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and also her daughter,
Miss Alicia Lefanu, published books during the lifetime of Shelley. The
former printed _The Flowers, a Fairy Tale_, 1810, and _The Sons of Erin,
a Comedy_, 1812. To the latter various works are assigned, such as
_Rosard's Chain, a Poem_. (5) Mr. John Howard Payne was author of
_Brutus, or the Fall of Tarquin, an Historical Tragedy_, criticized in
the _Quarterly_ for April, 1820. I cannot understand why Shelley should
have supposed this criticism to be laudatory: it is in fact unmixed
censure. As thus:--'He appears to us to have no one quality which we
should require in a tragic poet.... We cannot find in the whole play a
single character finely conceived or rightly sustained, a single
incident well managed, a single speech--nay a single sentence--of good
poetry.' It is true that the same article which reviews Payne's _Brutus_
notices also, and with more indulgence, Sheil's _Evadne_: possibly
Shelley glanced at the article very cursori