One of the Baron's Deputy-Readers has been looking through Mr. G.W. HENLEY's Lyra Heroica; a Book of Verse for Boys. DAVID NUTT, London.) This is his appreciation:—Mr. HENLEY has tacked his name to a collection which contains some noble poems, some (but not much) trash, and a good many pieces, which, however poetical they may be, are certainly not heroic, seeing that they do not express "the simpler sentiments, and the more elemental emotions" (I use Mr. HENLEY's prefatory words), and are scarcely the sort of verse that boys are likely, or ought to care about. To be sure, Mr. HENLEY guards himself on the score of his "personal equation"—I trust his boys understand what he means. My own personal equation makes me doubt whether Mr. HENLEY has done well in including such pieces as, for instance, HERBERT's "Memento Mori," CURRAN's "The Deserter," SWINBURNE's "The Oblation," and ALFRED AUSTIN's "Is Life Worth Living?" If Mr. HENLEY, or anybody else who happens to possess a personal equation, will point out to me the heroic quality in these poems, I shall feel deeply grateful. And how, in the name of all that is or ever was heroic, has "Auld Lang Syne" crept into this collection of heroic verse? As for Mr. ALFRED AUSTIN, I cannot think by what right he secures a place in such a compilation. I have rarely read a piece of his which did not contain at least one glaring infelicity. In "Is Life Worth Living?" he tells us of "blithe herds," which (in compliance with the obvious necessities of rhyme, but for no other reason)
"Wend homeward with unweary feet,
Carolling like the birds."
Further on we find that
"England's trident-sceptre roams
Her territorial seas,"
merely because the unfortunate sceptre has to rhyme somehow to "English homes."
But I have a further complaint against Mr. HENLEY. He presumes, in the most fantastic manner, to alter the well-known titles of celebrated poems. "The Isles of Greece" is made to masquerade as "The Glory that was Greece"; "Auld Lang Syne" becomes "The Goal of Life," and "Tom Bowline" is converted into "The Perfect Sailor." This surely (again I use the words of Mr. HENLEY) "is a thing preposterous, and distraught." On the whole, I cannot think that Mr. HENLEY has done his part well. His manner is bad. His selection, it seems to me, is open to grave censure, on broader grounds than the mere personally equational of which he speaks, and his choppings, and sub-titles, and so forth, are not commendable. The irony of literary history has apparently ordained that Mr. HENLEY should first patronise, and then "cut," both CAMPBELL and MACAULAY. Was the shade of MACAULAY disturbed when he learnt that Mr. HENLEY considered his "Battle of Naseby" both "vicious and ugly"?
BARON DE BOOK-WORMS & CO.