With some distrust of our critical infallibility, we have selected these four volumes of poems out of some two dozen that lie on our table. The difference between one volume of minor poetry and another is generally infinitesimal, and we are far from meaning to imply that the volumes left unnoticed are much below the level of the others. We presume that minor poetry is written chiefly for a few congenial minds in whom similar associations produce susceptibility to similar impressions and emotions. But the critic must judge from a _quasi_ absolute point of view, and take his stand, as it were, on the elementary passions of the mind and the cardinal facts of nature. We notice Mr. Howitt's volume not because we think it contains anything even resembling poetry, but from respect for his name, and for the sincerity of his convictions. 'The Mad War-Planet' is, unhappily, an epic, and, still more unhappily, an epic with a theory. Mr. Howitt believes the earth to be a spherical lunatic asylum, in which the thousand million lunatics are unfortunately _not_ under restraint. The theory is, of course, not new, but the working out of it is less original and interesting than we should have expected. 'Muriel, the Sea King's Daughter,' is musical with the tones and tinged with the hues of the youngest school of poetry. But the art of it is delicate and finished, and proves a real poetic gift, apart from the echoes of Tennyson and Morris which ring through the poem. The majority of Miss Caulfeild's poems are the manifestations of an evidently unaffected piety. The poetry of them lies chiefly in a certain completeness of presentation, a severity of limitation by which the ragged edges of an emotion are made to fall off, and the mood to crystallize into a defined and beautiful form. _Pilgrim Songs in Cloud and Sunshine._ By NEWMAN HALL, LL.B. Hamilton and Adams.