19 



In the whole poem are eleven lines, seven of them superfluous. 

 The first four make a completed romance. The title itself is a 

 stroke of genius. In this little quatrain the rise of the young 

 Pretender in the North— the gathering of the clans— the call to 

 arms— the wild enthusiasm of the Highlanders— the skirll of the 

 pipes— the alarm in the South— the march to victory— defeat 

 and banishment— and the longing and sorrowuag of wives and 

 mothers and sweethearts left behind— are brought as vividly 

 before the mind's eye as a flash of lightning reveals a distant 

 landscape. Outside Shakespeare I only know two examples 

 comparable to it ; one is Marlowe's apostrophe to Helen : 



" Was this the face that launched a thousand ships, 

 And burnt the topless towers of Ilium? " 



and the verse in Wordsworth's " Highland Girl : " 

 " What is it that the maiden sings : 



How do the numbers flow ? 

 Of old, forciotten, far off things 

 And battles long ago." 



In the three tragedies—" Dante's Wife : " " Sudden Death : " 

 and " City Chimes "—this power of depicting with a few strokes 

 complex and disconnected events is strikingly apparent. In the 

 sonnet on Gemma the doglike fidelity, the mute misery and 

 self abnegation of a large class of women is epitomised in four- 

 teen lines ; the three volumes of Mrs. Carlyle's letters do not 

 reveal more. " City Chimes " is a five-act tragedy condensed in 

 a couple of pages. There is no prologue to the play bespeaking 

 our sympathy for the heroine : nor any Shandean delay in lead- 

 ing up to the main incidents in the drama, but immediately the 

 curtain rises we are absorbed and held until the pitiful tale is 

 told. There are only three characters in the piece. One is 

 almost a nonentity — the aristocratic villain never appears— and 

 the shy city merchant's daughter is left on the stage alone to 

 appeal to the feelings of the audience. The principal remaining 

 poems : "In February : " " Yesterday: " " Soap Suds : " and the 

 " Mill Wheel : " are all worth noting for their artistic qualities : 

 recurring felicities of phrase, and genuine pathos and humour ; 

 while the second part of " Affinities " might have been translated 

 direct out of the golden prime of Greek mythology. Taking it 

 altogether, no such book of performance and promise has 

 appeared for many years. A dehghtful old-world atmosphere 

 surrounds it 



" And the sweetness as of a hundred Junes 

 Seems gathered up in the sunny weather " 



that floods the pages wherein the young Pagan shepherds who ran 



" Over Thessalian meadows 

 Wet with Olympian dews : " 



