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WILLIAM C.
ROSCOE.

Pp. 180--184.

JULIAN
FANE.

These sommets were not published in the author's lifetime, and therefore did not receive his final revision. This will account for some slight defects of composition which detract a little from the charm of these delicately beautiful poems. The sonnet quoted upon page 184 forms the epilogue to Mr. Roscoe's Tragedy of "Violenzia," a drama of high purpose and admirable execution, which deserves a larger recognition from the public than it appears yet to have received. The comparative neglect of the poem is probably owing to its plot, which may offend modern taste notwithstanding the refined manner in which an unpleasant subject is handled. Mr. R. H. Hutton in his beautiful Memoir of the author, writes "I do not think that any drama, except Mr. Kingsley's Saint's Tragedy which has appeared since the publication of Shelley's Cenci, is worthy to be compared to it in power and beauty," and the reader fresh from the perusal of this noble tragedy will not think this judgment too favourable.

The Hon. Julian Fane, whose brilliant career has been so beautifully and affectionately recorded by his friend the Hon. Pp. 185-189. Robert Lytton (now Lord Lytton), was more remarkable for

versatility of culture than for originality of genius. He was a poet, a musician, a linguist, a diplomatist, an eloquent speaker, a wit, a mimic, a delightful talker; with a heart as noble as his intellect was commanding, and according to his biographer, "the most graceful and accomplished gentleman of the generation he adorned." From earliest youth to the latest year of his life Fane welcomed his mother's birthday with a song, and the best of these annual effusions took the form of the sonnet. "Many of them," says Mr. Lytton, were sonnets in the form of which Shakespeare made such wonderful use, and which later English poets have so little employed, that, in the range of modern poetry, few happier examples of it exist than Julian

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JULIAN FANE. Continued.

Fane's. He made of it, as the great master had done, a key to unlock his heart." Again, writing of the Sonnet and of his friend's success in this form of verse, he says: "The number of those poets who have succeeded in the composition of it is exceedingly small, belonging to the first rank only; and even here the differences are great. Masterly as are the sonnets of Milton, Wordsworth, or Keats, those of Shakespeare have a peculiar poetical physiology which places them quite apart, constituting a separate group, related to, but essentially differing from, all the others. Turning away from the more ordinary form, Julian Fane went back to this of Shakespeare; he loved and studied Shakespeare's sonnets till he became saturated with the spirit of them." It must, we think, be added that the results of this study, beautiful and valuable as they are, show how even in his best verse and in uttering his deepest feelings the genius of Fane forced him to be imitative. The two fine sonnets dated 1870, possess a singular interest. "On the evening of the 12th of March," writes the biographer, "his physical suffering was excessive. The following day was the birthday of his mother. That day had never yet dawned upon a deeper sorrow than it now reawakened in the soul of her he loved so well. For the first time in all the long course of their tender intercourse she could not look forward to that accustomed and treasured tribute of dedicated song wherewith her son had never yet failed to honour the advent of this day. Yet she found what she dared not, could not, anticipate. There lay upon her table, when she rose on that saddest of all her birthday anniversaries, a letter in the old beloved handwriting; which with a few simple utterances of devoted affection, contained the two following sonnets. They are the last words ever written by Julian Fane."

DAVID
GRAY.

Pp. 190-193.

His

David Gray's name has not been "traced in sand." short life was long enough to win much affection and appreciation, and after death his memory has been tenderly cherished by sympathising friends. Mr. Milnes (now Lord Houghton) who befriended the young poet in the wisest and most practical manner, when counsel and direction were the most needed, writes of him with discriminative praise, believing there was in him the making of a great man, and it is scarcely too much to say that Mr. Buchanan's monograph of his friend is one of the most affecting and beautiful chapters in modern literature. It is painful to listen to the young poet's passionate cry after life as it was slipping from him, and to note his eager, boy-like ambition to gain a name in poetry before death took him. He was so young, so full of hope and aspiration, of confidence in his own powers, and of exultation in life, that we read of the slow and sure destruction of his hopes with infinite sorrow. The reality of his verse is perhaps its most characteristic feature; the inmost soul of the writer is uttered out in his sonnets, and they are alone sufficient to preserve the memory of "the hand-loom weaver's son." We are glad to hear that Mr. Maclehose, to whose courtesy we are indebted for permission to print these sonnets, is about to publish a new edition of Gray's poems.

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