490 REVIEWS. 



The Prophecy op Merlin, and other Poems. By John Eeade. 



Montreal : Dawson Brothers, 1870. 



la every age characterised by special literary vigour, the leaders of 

 thought are seen to find a school of followers to whom their produc- 

 tions give law. So was it when Pope was the ruling power ; when 

 Scott's lays revived the romantic epic of Spenser; or when Byron for 

 a time won all ears to his musical verse. Now the Poet Laureate rules 

 supreme wherever poetry commands an appreciative audience, and the 

 echos of his rich music are readily traced in the notes of our minor 

 poets. It is no slight, however, on a poet to rank him as pertain- 

 ing to the school of which the living master of song is the recognised 

 head; and it is with no purpose of disparagement that we trace, not 

 merely in the theme of the chief piece in the volume of poems, the 

 title of which heads this article, but also in its forms of versification 

 and modes of thought : evidences of training in the school of Ten- 

 nyson. As such, were the volume issued from the English press, it 

 would present no special claims on the attention of a Canadian literary 

 journal; but as a poet issuing his work from the Canadian press, Mr. 

 Reade may claim some critical notice at our hands. 



Literature as yet is necessarily one of the rarer products of our young 

 country; but we are not on that account prepared to welcome any com- 

 monplace production of a provincial versifier, as though mediocrity 

 acquired a higher value in the colonial dependency than in the mother 

 land. We are, indeed, perhaps prone to under-estimate our native 

 literary productions, as presumably inferior to those begot in the great 

 centres of intellectual vitality. 



Governed by old-world principles and canons of taste, we are as 

 speedily nauseated here, as persons of discernment are in any other 

 region of the world, by volumes issuing from the press, presenting 

 to the eye page after page of fair typography duly arranged and sub- 

 divided, indicating here long stretches of epic narrative, and there can- 

 toSj strophes, and fragmentary stanzas in every variety of prosodiacal 

 metre ; but all of which, when tested as vehicles of ideas intended to 

 delight the human fancy or intellect, are found to be mere shapes and 

 forms; like Gratiano's talk, amounting to "an infinite deal of no- 

 thing" — hiding, it may be, in whole bushels of chaff, a few grains of 

 wheat, not worth the search when you have found them. 



It is because the little volume whose title appears above is decidedly 



