But I feel a perfect rest

Settle down upon my breast,
Settin' by the twilight hid
Hearin' what the baby did.

Then I jist make up with fate

An' my happiness is great;

But if fate should lay its han'
On that baby, understan',

Through the worl' I'd sulk apart,
With red murder in my heart;

If she sat no more half-hid

Tellin' what the baby did.

One cannot but regret that our modern English light verse writers have not caught more of this American spirit. It is to be lamented that a writer of the skill and versatility of Mr. Gilbert should have contented himself to such an extent with writing nonsense verses. It is but rarely that he remembers the mission of the humorous poet, though occasionally, in Bab, there is a suspicion of finer work, such, for example, as "Haunted."

Haunted? Ay, in a kind of way,

By a vision of ghosts in a dread array;
But no conventional spectres they-

Appalling, grim, and tricky;

I quail at mine as I'd never quail

At a fine traditional spectre pale,

With a turnip head, and a ghastly wail,

And a splash of blood on his dicky.

Such is the opening verse, but Mr. Gilbert's truer touch is seen when he speaks of

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Ghosts who hover about the grave

Of all that's manly, true and brave,

You'll find their names in the architrave

Of that charnel-house-Society.

'Modesty," with withering sarcasm, teaches the folly of

prudery when reduced to its absurd extreme-it might well be termed an address to the purity which apes tyrrany. Beyond these few stanzas, however, Mr. Gilbert rarely rises above the level of the nonsense verse.

Lewis Carroll, of "Walrus and Carpenter" fame, is also an adept at burlesque verse, and mention must also be made of Austin Dobson and Quiller Couch. The last named gentleman, to whom reference was made in treating of parodies, is less known as a light poet than as a novelist; but in his Oxford days he showed considerable skill as a versifier. One of his best pieces, "Ballinderry," was published in the Oxford University Magazine. It is an Irish girl's lament for her lover, written with exquisite mock-pathos. The anti-climax in the last stanza is very fine

'Twas pretty to be by blue Killarney,

'Twas pretty to hear the linnet's call,
But whist, for I cannot attind their blarney,
Nor whistle in answer, at all, at all;

For the voice that he swore wud outcall the linnet's

Is cracked entoirely, an' out of tune,—

For the clock-work missed it by fifteen minutes
An' scatthered poor Phelim all over the moon,
Aroon! aroon!!

It is with much regret that one is led to differ from that penetrating critic, the late Mr. Francis Adams, but in his estimate of Mr. Rudyard Kipling, in the Fortnightly, I cannot but think that he overlooked one of the essentials of semi-pathetic humorous verse. Men do not gather grapes from thorns, and Mr. Kipling took one of the most rugged classes of humanity and pictured their thoughts and sayings with a reckless fidelity-and all faithfulness, in love affairs, as in literature, is necessarily reckless. He has thrown a halo round the recruit; true, as he puts into

the recruit's mouth, "We ain't no plaster saints," but there is a deep well of common humanity which springs up constantly in the actions of Kipling's recruits, even though the verse be frequently faulty, and the English be the tongue of the cadger.

Neither has Kipling idealised. He has pictured the soldier as he naturally is. This is another advantage which the light poet possesses over his hard-working brother. The professional poet is bound to idealize; if he does not, he must give up the business. But the light poet gives us Nature; frequently we laugh at his drolleries, and sometimes we laugh when our eyelashes are moistened with the tears of which we are ashamed.

So it is with Kipling. "Danny Deever" is intensely sad; "Gunga Din " gives us a picture of a man of a class too often despised, yet, although black of countenance, who was, as Kipling says,—

"White, clear white inside."

It is

Then there is the noble strain "Fuzzy-Wuzzy." easy to laugh at these poems, but I doubt if they are ever read without a feeling of love for the subject arising in the heart of the intelligent reader.

Kipling does for the soldier what Bret Harte did for the gold-digger, he makes him into a fascinating if not a lovable character. First, in "Tommy Atkins," he gives us the soldier with a grievance and a very real grievance it is.

We aren't no thin red heroes, we aren't no blackguards too
But single men in barricks, most remarkable like you;
An' if sometimes our conduck isn't all your fancy paints,
Why single men in barricks don't grow into plaster saints
While it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that,

An' Tommy, "Fall be'ind,"

But it's "Please to walk in front, sir,"

When there's trouble in the wind.

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Mandalay" is a very charming picture of the soldier who longs for India,-for the old Moulmein pagoda, for the banjo, for a vision of the yellow petticoat, for the

Neater, sweeter maiden in the cleaner, greener land.

Tommy's description of the maiden is given in a stanza which, in spite of the critics, I persist in calling lovely,—

W'en the mist was on the rice fields, and the sun was droppin' slow,
She'd git 'er little banjo, and she'd sing Kulla-lo-lo,
With 'er arm upon my shoulder and 'er cheek agin my cheek,
We'd useter watch the steamers an' the hathis pilin' teak,

Elephints a-pilin teak,

On the sludgy, squdgy creek,
Where the silence 'ung that 'eavy

You was 'arf afraid to speak!

On the road to Mandalay.

We have room and to spare for such writers, for men who will ease our burdens and give us a light heart, but who will at the same time remember, in their easy openhearted fashion, the troubles and difficulties of life. We have sufficient sadness. We do not look to young men who are climbing the steep slope of Parnassus, by the aid of Elliot Stock and John Lane, to add to our misery by verse of leaden tinge. Brighten our darkling souls, oh! writers, for yours is a magician's wand which knows no unresponsive object, yours is a magnet for which there is ever a lode-stone.

For we look behind us along those sands which have almost become Mr. Longfellow's copyright,-those dreary sands of time. "The road that we have traversed," says Mr. Jerome, "is very fair behind us. We see not the sharp stones; we only see the roses by the wayside. Even the strong briers that stung us are to our distant eyes but gentle tendrils waving in the wind."

"The brightest side of everything is also its highest and best, so that as our little lives sink behind us into the dark sea of forgetfulness, all that which is the lightest and the most gladsome is the last to sink, and stands above the waters, long in sight, when the angry thoughts and smarting pain are buried deep below the waves and trouble us no more."