OXFORD CHRONICLE.—‘This is an 8vo. volume, printed in clear type, on thick paper; cloth, gilt lettered. Its pages are laden with the music of the love song and old-time love story. The aim of the author, not only to reach the reasoning faculties, but to appeal to the imagination and emotions; and to yield that pleasure to the mind which is the design of poetry as of music, has been gained. True poetry, it has been said, portrays, with terrible energy, the excesses of the passions; but they are passions which show a mighty nature; which are full of power; which command awe, and excite a deep though shuddering sympathy. Its great tendency and power is to carry the mind above and beyond the beaten, dusty, and weary walks of ordinary life: to lift it into a purer element, and to breathe into it a more profound and generous emotion. This consummation has been obtained by the dramatic Idyll Ilamea, with which Part I. opens. Its sublimity and elegance of style entitle it to rank as one of the finest classics ever written on love.’
NORTHERN ECHO.—‘Idylls, Legends, and Lyrics bespeak the true poetic vein; the light phantasy of romantic thought; and the faculty of expressing all in rhythmic verse. A Dramatic Idyll, Ilamea, is, perhaps, the happiest in the volume. It dwells, as really does the whole book, on the immortal theme of love; and an argumentative colloquy between two persons, the Count and Ilamea, reveals a flow of language and beautifully balanced metre that make it a pleasure to read or recite.’
DAILY TELEGRAPH.—‘This work is principally composed of old-time love stories in verse, which the author claims have never before formed subject of treatment by the poet. They present a picture, though only a legendary one, of the days of our ancestors, and are interesting on that account. A bouquet of love sonnets are treated with no little skill and originality. An ancient legend of Ireland is very cleverly and sympathetically rendered in Edain; Cædmon, an Early English Idyll, is also noteworthy. It is something to be reminded of the “peasant poet who, a thousand years before Milton, sang the epic of the Creation; vividly depicting the War in Heaven, the Fall of Satan, and his Counsellings in Hell.” The author has produced a collection of poems which exhibit true poetic instinct; and the work makes a goodly and acceptable volume.’
THE GRAPHIC.—‘The love song and love story form the staple of Mrs. Garland Mears’ Idylls, Legends, and Lyrics. She possesses much fluency of expression, and is not troubled in her theme by any melancholy transcendentalism. In her view the object of poetry is to yield pleasure to the mind, and it should appeal either to the imagination or to the emotions. “Its true object,” she observes, “is not obtained when it becomes chiefly the vehicle for philosophical or metaphysical instruction reaching only the reasoning faculties.” Some of the poems have a simple love tale for their basis, as in Ilamea, Cædmon, and The Love of Uther, the British King, for Igerna, with the resultant birth of Arthur. In Honoria’s Love we have a series of eighteen sonnets; from the first of these we quote the eight opening lines dealing with “Love’s Entrance.”
‘“Oh, kingly Love, when first thou didst enthral
My soul in thy sweet bonds I hardly knew
Thy presence: filled with joy, what could I do
But gaze upon thy face, and at thy call
Give willing ear? Then straight before thee fall,
In meekness yielding loving homage, true.