Dans nos palais, où, près de la victoire, Brillaient les arts, doux fruits des beaux climats, J’ai vu du Nord les peuplades sans gloire, De leurs manteaux secouer les frimas. On the whole, however, Mr. Toynbee’s work is good; _Les Champs_, for example, is very well translated, and so are the two delightful poems _Rosette_ and _Ma République_; and there is a good deal of spirit in _Le Marquis de Carabas_: Whom have we here in conqueror’s _rôle_? Our grand old marquis, bless his soul! Whose grand old charger (mark his bone!) Has borne him back to claim his own. Note, if you please, the grand old style In which he nears his grand old pile; With what an air of grand old state He waves that blade immaculate! Hats off, hats off, for my lord to pass, The grand old Marquis of Carabas!— though ‘that blade immaculate’ has hardly got the sting of ‘un sabre innocent’; and in the fourth verse of the same poem, ‘Marquise, you’ll have the bed-chamber’ does not very clearly convey the sense of the line ‘La Marquise a le tabouret.’ Béranger is not nearly well enough known in England, and though it is always better to read a poet in the original, still translations have their value as echoes have their music. _A Selection from the Songs of De Béranger in English Verse_. By William Toynbee. (Kegan Paul.) THE POETRY OF THE PEOPLE (_Pall Mall Gazette_, May 13, 1886.) The Countess Martinengo deserves well of all poets, peasants and publishers. Folk-lore is so often treated nowadays merely from the point of view of the comparative mythologist, that it is really delightful to come across a book that deals with the subject simply as literature. For the Folk-tale is the father of all fiction as the Folk-song is the mother of all poetry; and in the games, the tales and the ballads of primitive people it is easy to see the germs of such perfected forms of art as the drama, the novel and the epic. It is, of course, true that the highest expression of life is to be found not in the popular songs, however poetical, of any nation, but in the great masterpieces of self-conscious Art; yet it is pleasant sometimes to leave the summit of Parnassus to look at the wildflowers in the valley, and to turn from the lyre of Apollo to listen to the reed of Pan. We can still listen to it. To this day, the vineyard dressers of Calabria will mock the passer-by with satirical verses as they used to do in the old pagan days, and the peasants of the olive woods of Provence answer each other in amœbæan strains. The Sicilian shepherd has not yet thrown his pipe aside, and the children of modern Greece sing the swallow-song through the villages in spring-time, though Theognis is more than two thousand years dead. Nor is this popular poetry merely the rhythmic expression of joy and sorrow; it is in the highest degree imaginative; and taking its inspiration directly from nature it abounds in realistic metaphor and in