but we willingly acknowledge the vigour with which they are put into verse. For the two longest ballads, indeed, the Ballad in Blank Verse of the Making of a Poet' and the 'Ballad of the Exodus from Houndsditch,' we do not greatly care. Declamations against pseudo-Christianity are neither new nor useful, and it requires no great courage on a writer's part to knock down a dummy which he has himself erected. Only the strenuous rhetorical style of the latter redeems it from commonplace. The two finest poems in the volume, to our mind, are the 'Ballad of a Nun' and the Ballad of Heaven,' while 'Thirty Bob a Week' is a striking sketch of a London clerk's life, worthy to rank with Mr. Kipling's Barrack-Room Ballads. The central idea of the former is somewhat difficult to justify in cold blood, but the description of the convent with which it begins is one of the best things of the kind which Mr. Davidson has done. 'High on a hill the convent hung, The jewels of their lofty snows In constellations flashed at night; Long ere she left her cloudy bed, The adventurous sun took Heaven by storm; Smouldered and glittered in the plain.' 1 1 We have, perhaps, already quoted overmuch; but we cannot refrain from giving, as a last sample of Mr. Davidson's quality, the conclusion of the 'Ballad of Heaven.' A musician, wrapt in his art, has seen his wife and child die, and his heart breaks as he feels his work unaccomplished and those whom he loved dead. He dies, and finds his music in heaven. 'God, smiling, took him by the hand, And led him to the brink of heaven : 1 Ballads and Songs, p. 52. Dead silence reigned; a shudder ran Through space; Time furled his wearied wings; Sweetly resolving troubled things. The dead were heralded along : As if with drums and trumps of flame, The conquering scherzo thundered Day. Is now the music of the spheres."'1 We have found much to admire, much to enjoy, in Mr. Davidson's verse; but we do not think that in him we have the poet of the future. Mr. Davidson is an accomplished man of letters, skilled in prose as well as in verse; a dramatic writer of some merit, with gifts of strength and independence, of rhythm and rhetoric, which make all his work interesting. But these are not enough to carry a man's work far beyond his own day. He lacks the greatness of conception, the literary tradition, and the high ideal which we look for in the great poet, and of which we found some share in the writer of whom we were speaking just now. Mr. Davidson has done well what he has taken in hand; but he has not aimed so high as Mr. Watson. To both we owe our thanks; but to Mr. Watson more of our admiration. One young writer remains whose claims to be the coming poet were trumpeted in no measured tone (not by himself, be it said) some fifteen months ago. To Mr. Coventry Patmore belongs the credit of having discovered' Mr. Francis Thompson, whose first and only volume of verses came with all the shock of a complete surprise on the world of readers. Amid all the volumes of poetry for which the printing press is annually responsible, nothing had in the least resembled the manner of this new writer. A young poet is inevitably imitative to some extent; but Mr. Thompson's prototype is found, not in Tennyson or Keats, not in Wordsworth or the poets of the last century, but in the religious poets of the Stuart period. In audacity of phrase, in far-fetched conceits, in coinage of new and strange words, in exuberance of figure 1 Ballads and Songs, p. 77. and metaphor, even in lapses of taste and exaggeration of fancifulness, he finds his literary ancestors in Vaughan and Herbert, Cowley and Crashaw. Mr. Thompson is, indeed, the very antithesis of Mr. William Watson. He has the exuberance of invention which the other lacks; but, on the other hand, he has none of the self-restraint, the fastidiousness, the artistic finish, the transparent lucidity, which make Mr. Watson's verse so pleasant to the cultured taste. Mr. Thompson does violence to our taste in every page, yet wins pardon by the gorgeous fancy which inspires him. Much of his verse is as intolerable as much of Endymion, but it has much, too, of the promise of Endymion. If Mr. Thompson has his development before him; if he can acquire taste and judgment; if he can tame the luxuriance of his fancy, and keep his Pegasus under bridle, he may yet produce something which will be as great an advance on his first volume as Saint Agnes' Eve and Hyperion are upon Endymion. Everything depends upon this acquisition of artistic mastery over his materials; for in the other gifts of the poet, imagination and warmth of feeling and a sense of rhythm, he has shown already that he is richly endowed. The reader who wishes to see Mr. Thompson's extravagance at its height may be referred to 'A Corymbus for Autumn'; we prefer to quote, as the one example of his work which our space will admit, some lines from the fine poem entitled 'The Hound of Heaven': 'I fled Him, down the nights and down the days; I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears I hid from Him, and under running laughter. Adown Titanic glooms of chasmed fears, From those strong Feet that followed, followed after. And unperturbed pace, More instant than the Feet, "All things betray thee, who betrayest Me." I tempted all His servitors, but to find My own betrayal in their constancy, In faith to Him their fickleness to me, Their traitorous trueness, and their loyal deceit. To all swift things for swiftness I did sue; Or whether, Thunder-driven, They clang'd his chariot 'thwart a heaven, Plashy with flying lightnings round the spurn o' their feet :- Deliberate speed, majestic instancy, Came on the following Feet, And a Voice above their beat 'Naught shelters thee, who wilt not shelter Me." Mr. Thompson bespeaks our favour as the kinsman of two most highly gifted ladies, Mrs. Meynell and Lady Butler; he wins it for himself by the fervour of his enthusiasm, the intense earnestness of his poetic and religious aspirations, by the promise of greater things for the future in the very extent and character of his lapses from perfection in the present. His next volume will be expected with no ordinary interest. He has secured the right to a favourable, a willing hearing; and it will give sincere pleasure to all lovers of English literature if he can show that this goodwill has not been offered to him in vain. So much and no more can we say after a review of the three most prominent among the younger poets of to-day. The promise of young poets is often unfulfilled, and therefore we are forbidden to be too confident. It may be that we have still many years to wait before a successor will be found for the throne of Tennyson. The great luminaries of the poetic heaven have set, and in the darkness we hear the question, again and again repeated, 'Watchman, what of the night? But the watchman, taking heed not to mistake even the brightest of the stars for the sun of heaven, can as yet answer nothing certain, except only the promise, The morning will come.' 1 ART. X.-RECENT WORKS ON EGYPT. 1. The Dawn of Civilization. By G. MASPERO. Edited by A. H. SAYCE. Translated by M. L. MCCLURE. London, 1894. 2. Life in Ancient Egypt. Described by ADOLF ERMAN. Translated by H. M. TIRARD. London, 1894. 3. Egypt under the Pharaohs. By HEINRICH BRUGSCH. A New Edition, condensed and thoroughly revised by M. BRODRICK. London, 1891. 4. A History of Egypt from the Earliest Times to the XVIth Dynasty. By W. M. FLINDERS PETRIE. London, 1894. THAT three works upon Egyptology, of the scope and depth of Maspero's Dawn of Civilization, Erman's Life in Ancient Egypt, and Petrie's History of Egypt, should have been issued from three different publishing houses within a few weeks of each other, speaks volumes for the interest that is awakening in this country upon the subject of Egyptian Archæology. Hitherto, England as a nation has been conspicuous by the utter absence of interest she has displayed in all matters relating to the systematic study of Egyptology, to the rescue of Ancient Egyptian monuments, or to the recovery of historic sites in Egypt. There is hardly a European country of any note where, in one at least of their chief universities, may not be found a Chair of Egyptology, giving thorough instruction in all branches of that science. Notably is this the case in Paris and Berlin, where for years past there have been such successful schools under the guidance of Professors Maspero and Erman. Moreover, in Paris, besides the lectures of Maspero at the Collège de France, MM. Revillout and Pierret have for long taught in the school attached to the great national museum. In both these places the students receive their training free of all cost. In England the wouldbe student of Egyptology, needing help, has been obliged until lately to betake himself to Paris, Berlin, Geneva, or some other foreign university. Two years ago, owing to the munificence of the late Miss Amelia B. Edwards, who spent her life in the endeavour to awaken in the English mind an interest in all that concerned Ancient Egypt and its people, a Chair of Egyptology was founded at University College, London. The system of teaching which is there adopted shows that even now English professors are either far behind their foreign confrères in what they consider the requirements |