is music undeniable, irresistible to all but the most case-hardened critic, in every line of the closing poem. L'Envoi may send us away carrying in our mind's eye images of blurred outline, and having very vague ideas as to the meaning of sentence or verse, but the colours are deep and striking, and strange and manifold the associations that weird harmony brings with it.

That Rudyard Kipling is by no means flawless in execution has been conceded frankly to those who attack him on this score. Another concession of as great importance must be made to others. He has no real contribution to make to a Philosophy of Life. In the one poem which touches this matter he is perhaps at his very worst.

Though it is an unfair sneer which makes the cardinal doctrine of Tomlinson the superiority of the man that goes through the world be-damning everybody, yet there is scarcely anything in this kind to be learnt from the Ballads that would not better be forgotten, beyond the duty, first and last, of bearing a brave front to the foe, a faithful heart for one's friend, and a life ever ready to be laid down for the country which claims it.

After all, this is good and wholesome, and a store of wisdom which never grows old. There is a truer ring in Rudyard's down-right glorification of mere bravery, than in most of the ideals that pose before us.

Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never twain shall meet, Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment seat;

But there is neither East nor West, Border nor Breed, nor

Birth,

When two strong men stand face to face, tho' they come from the ends of the earth!

However serious the limitations, in art or morals, of the man who wrote this, it is surely better to recognise, than to cavil at, the unique gifts which render their possessor not unworthy to rank among those poets

whose dwelling with us makes us "not ashamed when we speak with the enemy in the gate," though their chiet has been taken from their head.

In passing from the consideration of Mr Kipling's works, the words spoken of him by no mean master of "that other harmony of prose" may linger with us for

a moment.

His faults are so conspicuous, so much on the surface, that they hardly need to be named. They are curiously visible to some readers who are blind to his merits....Everybody can mark their errors; a few cannot overcome their antipathy, and so lose a great deal of pleasure.

A GAME OF BOWLS.

'JACK.'

J. A. N.

LIGHT of step you fled away
Across the velvet grass that day:
Watching, we strove to follow you,
With skill of bias, two and two.

Some have wandered far afield
Mis-spent by an impetuous arm;
Others prosperously reeled

Into the circle of your charm.

That lumbering fellow stands and stares,
Distant a foot's space more or less,
And filled with self-sufficient airs
Lives ignorant of happiness.

This other, waiting still afar,

Turns his full gaze to where you are,
And mourns across the parting plain
He cannot have his throw again.-

Of me one half has gone astray
And on the gravelled desert died:
The other half found out the way
And, dribbing, tumbled to your side.
C. E. S

P

'THE BARD OF THE FOREST.'

ROBABLY only some of the older readers of the Eagle are acquainted with the little browncovered book before me, which a bookseller's manuscript note inside the cover calls 'scarce and curious.' A label on the back bears the words

Wickenden's Remarkable Passages and Poems. It is worth while however to give the full title from the titlepage: Some Remarkable Passages in the Life of William Wickenden, B.A., alias Bard of the Forest, written by himself. Author of the 'Rustic's Lay,' 'Count Glarus of Switzerland,' 'Bleddyn,' 'Poems, Prose and Poetry, and Australasian,' (sic) and other Poems. London: Printed for the author, &c. There is no date given, probably 1848 would be near the mark.

The list of subscribers is interesting. It includes the Archbishop of York, the Bishops of St Asaph, St David's, Ely, Gloucester and Bristol, Lincoln, Lichfield, Peterborough, and Ripon, Charles Dickens Esq., Regent's Park, Douglas Jerrold, Esq., Putney, the Rev B. H. Kennedy, D.D. Shrewsbury, the Rev W. Selwyn, the Venerable Archdeacon Thorp, the Rev H. Alford, the Rev H. H. Hughes, and other familiar names.

The book is a rather high-flown autobiography, diversified by poetry, and was apparently written under pressure of poverty. But there is interest for us in the account of the earlier days when the self-styled 'Bard of the Forest' was a student at St John's, and according to his own account no less remarkable for his prowess

in a 'Town and Gown' riot than for his extraordinary assiduity in study.

William Wickenden is a pronounced sentimentalist, and begins by shedding poetical tears over his native village (apparently Blakeney in the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire) and the 'Old House at Home.'

He was a farmer's son. 'To tend the herds, to turn the furrow were the earliest lessons I received. Yet from my very infancy my soul sought to burst asunder the shackles which enchained it.' At the age of eleven he wrote a Hymn to Content, and invited that 'rural nymph' to 'come from the shade' and make his breast her throne. Under these circumstances he was prepared to make a handsome offer:

Ambition, Glory, I disown,

And mirth with roses crowned.

At the age of fourteen he lost his father and sought consolation in an irregular ode. In this he anticipates the defiantly independent spirit of his latter days:

Now I am lone and sad and not one joy

To cheer my mental gloom;

I was not made to truckle to the vulgar,
And sooner than ask their sympathy,
Or explain what is mysterious in me,
This proud heart should burst.

He tells us that about this time he played a practical joke on his mother's cook, having added some gunpowder to the goose-stuffing and so caused the sudden explosion of the bird. We are thus prepared for the statement 'I was a strange, wayward child from my first infancy, shy, reserved, and yet with a spice of the Devil in my composition.' Before he had reached the age of fifteen he found himself in love with one of the daughters of his schoolmaster, and his passion' absorbed his whole being.' He passed whole days in the meadows and woods, 'grew still more shy and reserved,' and flew from the presence of a stranger as from a

VOL. XVII.

R RR

pestilence.' No wonder that his conduct was misunder stood by the ordinary. The vulgar herd considered me non-com-pos (sic), the more intelligent as cut out for something extraordinary.' He never told his love, and we hear no more of this particular young lady.

His rising fame now attracted the attention of Dr Jenner, the discoverer of vaccination, who lived at Berkeley on the other side of the Severn, and kindly wrote to Wickenden asking him to call on him and bring his poems. 'I may here remark,' adds our

author, 'that it was Dr Jenner who subsequently conferred on me the name of the 'Bard of the Forest,' by which appellation I was afterwards so well known.' Dr Jenner took him into his gardens, and pointing to a little summer-house close to the churchyard wall, 'In that cave,' said he, 'the vaccine egg was hatched.' Wickenden's poetical paraphrase of this phrase may be added: "It was in this spot that he made that important discovery which preserves the roses of beauty in all their pristine loveliness.' What a thing it is to be a really literary man!

From his father's death in 1810 till 1817, when the Bard was twenty-two, he worked on the farm by day and 'engaged in literary pursuits' by night. In 1817, helped by local subscription, he brought out his first book, The Rustic's Lay and other Poems. An extract from his elegy on a Waterloo hero will give some idea of the force of his inspiration.

No more he'll win the mural crown,

Nor lead thy patriot sons to glory,
Nor strike to death with manly frown
Each warlike face so pale and gory.

For ah! he met his fated doom,

On Waterloo's ensanguined ground,
And sunk into the laurell'd tomb,

Cheer'd by the victors shouting round.

After the peace with France, the village of Blakeney