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The “Drama of Exile” calls for little more, in the way of comment, than what we have generally said. Its finest particular feature is, perhaps, the rapture of Eve — rapture bursting through despair — upon discovering that she still possesses, in the unwavering love of Adam, an undreamed-of and priceless treasure. The poem ends, as it commences, with a bull. The last sentence gives us to understand that “there is a sound through the silence, as of the falling tears of an angel.” How there can be sound during silence, and how an audience are to distinguish, by such sound, angel tears from any other species of tears, it may be as well, perhaps, not too particularly to inquire.

Next, in length, to the Drama, is “The Vision of Poets.” We object to the didacticism of its design, which the poetess thus states: `’I have attempted to express here my view of the mission of the veritable poet — of the self-abnegation implied in it, of the uses of sorrow suffered in it, of the great work accomplished in it through suffering, and of the duty and glory of what Balzac has beautifully and truly called ‘la patience angelique du genie.’’’ This “view” may be correct, but neither its correctness nor its falsity has anything to do with a poem. If a thesis is to be demonstrated, we need prose for its demonstration. In this instance, so far as the allegorical instruction and argumentation are lost sight of, in the upper current — so far as the main admitted intention of the work is kept out of view — so far only is the work a poem, and so far only is the poem worth notice, or worthy of its author. Apart from its poetical character, the composition is thoughtful, vivid, epigrammatic, and abundant in just observation — although the critical opinions introduced are not always our own. A reviewer in “Blackwood’s Magazine,” quoting many of these critical portraits, takes occasion to find fault with the grammar of this tristich: ­

Here Æschylus — the women swooned

To see so awful when he frowned

As the Gods did — he standeth crowned.

“What on earth,” says the critic, “are we to make of the words ‘the women swooned to see so awful’? .... The syntax will punish future commentators as much as some of his own corrupt choruses.” In general, we are happy to agree with this reviewer, whose decisions respecting the book are, upon the whole, so nearly coincident with ours, that we hesitated, through fear of repetition, to undertake a critique at all, until we considered that we might say a very great deal in simply supplying his omissions; but he frequently errs through mere hurry, and never did he err more singularly than at the point now in question. He evidently supposes that “awful” has been misused as an adverb and made referrible to “ women.” But not so; and although the construction of the passage is unjustifiably involute, its grammar is intact. Disentangling the construction, we make this evident at once: “Here AEschylus (he) standeth crowned, (whom) the women swooned to see so awful, when he frowned as the Gods did.” The “he” is excessive, and the “whom” is understood. Respecting the lines,

Euripides, with close and mild

Scholastic lips, that could be wild,

And laugh or sob out like a child

the critic observes: — “ ‘Right in the classes’ throws our intellect completely upon its beam-ends.” But, if so, the fault possibly lies in the crankness of the intellect; for the words themselves mean merely that Sophocles laughed or cried like a school-boy — like a child right (or just) in his classes — one who had not yet left school. The phrase is affected, we grant, but quite intelligible. A still more remarkable misapprehension occurs in regard to the triplet,

And Goethe, with that reaching eye

His soul reached out from, far and high,

And fell from inner entity.

The reviewer’s remarks upon this are too preposterous not to be quoted in full; — we doubt if any commentator of equal dignity ever so egregiously committed himself before. “Goethe,” he says, “is a