THE ALL-FATHER.

Is, then, thy love so strong?

GRETCHEN.

Alas! it is;

I never felt in Heaven while Goethe lived;

But still I cherished hope that time and change
Might make him worthy of Almighty mercy;

And so I dreamed, and dreamed that we should meet ;
But now that dream is gone-he is condemned,
And I am lonely even here in Heaven.

THE ALL-FATHER.

Margaret, this man forgot-deserted thee.

GRETCHEN.

No-not forgot; I know he did desert me ;
The pride and vanity of his high place
Raised him above me; but I know that still
I dwelt within his innermost heart and soul.
Forget me-no-he never could forget me.

THE FIRST ARCHANGel.

What! if God took thee at thy word, and sent thee
Down to deep Hell?

GRETCHEN.

Not Hell if he be there;

Where'er he be to me can ne'er be Hell.
Place me but by his side, and I am blest;
Let me but look upon him once again,
And whisper to his soul one little word

Of the undying love I feel for him,

And then do with me as thou wilt, for never
Can I be happy while he sits in sorrow.

The pleading intercession of Gretchen prevails with the Almighty, Goethe is granted to her prayers, and in Heaven, now doubly Heaven to her, the lovers break forth together into a song of thanksgiving and joy :

Father of light, thou readest both our hearts.

Henceforth for ever, we are only thine,

And thou art mine, and I am thine and Heaven's.

Such is the story of the poem; but the fairest and most marked feature of the poetry is this: What the Greeks call the gnomic element-so common in their dramas-is a most marked, and I must in justice add a most meritorious, characteristic of Dr. Kenealy's "Epic Pantomime." To read such verses as the following is to admire their moral beauty and vigour :

Who spares the wretched, wrongs the man that's just;
How wondrous in its strength is woman's love!

Akin to this is Dr. Kenealy's power of idealising the vices and virtues, especially the former, as in his masterly personification of Envy, rivalling the power and picturesqueness of Spenser :

Near her sits Envy, skeleton-limbed and pale,
Covered with eyes that ne'er look straight; a scowl
Grins on her brows; an ear for every tale

Of Calumny, a tongue those tales to howl;
Black clots of poison mark her gall-dewed trail;
She never smiles but at some treason foul,
Such as her darlings plan when she instils
The self-tormenting hate that beauty kills.

She has a nook in every human breast,

Till Virtue drives her out; the statesman grave
Receives her in his holy heart a guest ;

The lawyer feasts her, and the soldier brave
Wears her at times upon his waving crest;

The reverend priest, whose soul no sins deprave,
Takes her at church-hour to that hallowed shrine,-
"And, oh, that yonder greasy stall were mine !”

There is not only a profound philosophical truth underlying the following gnomic lines, but a moral rule, of very practical import :

That which to eyes of spirits, or of flesh,
Seems outwardly a vice, may be to God
The pure sublime of virtue; that which wears
The dazzling snowy semblance of the True,
Which the wise Cherubim behold with joy,

May to The Powers appear the thing it is

Black vice enmasqued. Thus Angels, Spirits, and Men

Err ever in their judgment of man's ways;

And this should bid them pause ere they condemn.

The poetical moral of the last line is so beautifully given in a parallel passage from Joaquin Miller that I cannot forbear quoting it :

In men whom men condemn as ill,

I see so much of goodness still;

In men whom men account divine,

I see so much of sin and blot,

I hesitate to draw the line

Between the two where God has not.

:

For beauty of form and of colour Dr. Kenealy has a fine sense of appreciation, and a hand most cunning to paint the loveliness of He is always at his best when he places such a picture as this before our charmed eyes, marred though it is with a dash of pedantry and sentimentality :

woman.

:

Her cheeks, her brow, her majesty of mien,

The Amphionic sweetness of her smiles,

VOL. XII. N.S., 1874.

Her loosely-flowing tresses, falling free
Over a bosom bright as noonday clouds
When the sun fills them; and her footsteps light
As summer winds, to Fancy made her seem
Fairer than her whose golden glance of love
Stole from himself the impassioned youth of Troy.
She came her coming was like morning light.
She moved so moves the cygnet o'er the stream.
She spake and Melody herself stood charmed.
There breathed a perfume from her rose-like lips
Sweeter than that which woos the passing winds
In Araby the blest, and courts their stay;
While her dark silken lashes curtained o'er

Eyes in whose softness all her soul broke forth,

Whose look was language, and whose light was thought.

After the feast of enjoyment in "reading, marking, and inwardly digesting" the many dainty delights of this poem, it looks ungracious and ungrateful to call attention to what detracts much from the sum-total of the pleasure. But in the interest of that even-handed justice, of which Dr. Kenealy is so avowed a champion or an advocate, I have no choice. His vices as a poet must be set down with his virtues. Occasional prolixity, obscurity, coarseness, and a passion for Latinised phraseology are his most besetting sins. In a new edition of his poem, Dr. Kenealy will best consult his own fame and the delight of his readers by cutting down his six hundred and odd pages to at least one-third of the amount. It is quality, not quantity, that makes the poet and secures his immortality. It is not to such Latinisms as

"vernal mirth," but to such as "nymphal winds" (which I cannot understand) that I most object. April, they say, is made up of the hours of all seasons, and after some such fashion Dr. Kenealy's multifarious and multiform poetical fancies remind me of Dante, of Milton, of Spenser, of Aristophanes, of Southey, of Byron, and Shelley, but more in their defects than in their excellences. Most equivocal at the best is his description of the stars as "night's nymphs." I much prefer Byron's "Ye stars, that are the poetry of Heaven," or even Longfellow's pretty, but pithy, "forget-me-nots of the angels." For "giant-snouted cliffs" and "lips that distil" I have no manner of liking, and I regret to find such abuse of metaphorical language pervading so much of the poem, often to utter bewilderment, as in such terms as "swanlike sea.”

I must, in conclusion, protest against the singular want of coherence and consistency that pervades the whole work. panoramic scenes succeed one another like so many pictures, with

He

no constructive system in view, no continuous recognition of the onward march of events. It seems vain to ask what was Dr. Kenealy's ideal position while writing this astounding work. has presented us with neither modern life, nor modern manners, nor mediæval legend, nor primitive tradition. His work is dramatic in form, but it departs from the simplicity of ancient tragedy, without approaching towards that more subtle and complicated unity which is the spirit that gives life to the modern drama. However, the most besetting and most fatal sin of the poem is its mysticism. Even in the sweetest of his songs the mysticism is a veil that dims rather than heightens the charm of true beauty. If there is any revelation of himself in this poem, Dr. Kenealy appears as a realistic mystic, piercing the densest shows and shams of the world in things temporal and spiritual, but clinging with tenacious faith to a Power that shapes all our purposes to His sovereign will. If Dr. Kenealy really finds in the world warranty enough for his darkly coloured portraiture of human sin and human sorrow, he might surely have contented himself with the painting of such portraits in the strongest and blackest of earthly colours he could find, without approaching the Eternal Throne in search of supernatural blackness in passages which, to sensitive minds, may possibly wear the air of blasphemy. But the mysticism of Dr. Kenealy renders his drama ideally false instead of being ideally true, and, conforming as it does to no accepted standard of cultivated taste, it fails to satisfy the test of subjective consistency and symmetry. The human life and faith it idealises are Dr. Kenealy's, and his alone; for neither Christian nor heathen, neither sceptic nor believer, neither Englishman nor foreigner, neither philosopher nor poet, neither the Claimant nor Lord Coleridge, ever had a serious conception of human life and faith at all answering to what is depicted in this poem, the apt moral of which is that "Man's an

ass."

CLYTIE.

A NOVEL OF MODERN LIFE.

BY JOSEPH HATTON.

BOOK II.

CHAPTER XVI.

BROKEN ON THE WHEEL.

T was a bright June day, not too hot, but sufficiently warm to be pleasant summer weather. Even Bow Street looked unobjectionable. The pavements were dry, the road was clean. Children were playing in the street. Bright posters hung like banners upon the entrance to Covent Garden Theatre. The sky could be seen overhead blue and white, as if a country sky had found itself accidentally over London

The hour is twelve o'clock in the day. Two policemen are standing under the blue professional-looking lamp over the policeoffice door. A knot of idlers are grouped about the court-house on the other side of the street. Presently they make way for Mr. Holland, whose name had become familiar to the world as Lord St. Barnard's counsel. Mr. Holland was accompanied by a clerk who carried the papers in the case. Shortly after Mr. Holland had entered the court there followed Mr. Cuffing with his blue bag, which looked as worn and knowing, as keen and shuffling, as he did himself. He carried the bag as if he had a victim by the neck and was pretending not to hurt him while he was pinching him viciously.

Inside the court a dense crowd were awaiting the further torture that was to be done upon Lady St. Barnard. Saturday's examination had been simply delightful to thousands. It was sensational, full of human anguish; it teemed with vile suggestions; the woman could not bear the exposure that awaited her. Mr. Cuffing was evidently a better fellow than the public had at first thought him. He had put those damaging questions about Cremorne, the Argyle, and Brighton with even gentlemanly delicacy. No wonder she fainted. now pretty clear that she was guilty. This was the public view of Saturday's business. It was sufficient for a large class that she was the daughter of an actress, more than enough for condemnation that