This edition of Sprague is beautifully printed, is published under the sanction of the author, and contains a number of poems never before collected. Although the current style in poetry has changed since Sprague first won his reputation, and an entirely new class of poets has caught the public ear, Sprague himself has been excepted from the neglect which has fallen upon too many of his school. The reason is that Sprague is really a poet, and the form of composition which a poet assumes, whether it be that of Pope or Wordsworth, of Young or Browning, is never of itself sufficient to consign him to oblivion. It is impossible to read a page of the present volume without being impressed with the conviction that you are communing with a strong nature, sound in heart and brain, and piercing through the shows to the realities of things by a native force and vividness of conception. Sprague appears here as a satirist and humorist, as a lyrist and as a poet of sentiment. In all of these he is successful. His curiosity is one of the best occasional poems over written in the United States. When we consider how wide a variety of humorous and pathetic pictures are called into being in the unfolding of one teeming idea, and that amid all the variety, the impression of unity is never lost, we must admit it to be not only poetical in passages, but poetical in its whole spirit and execution. The Odes we do not like so well. They are full of brain, but the feeling and sentiment do not seem to us sufficiently hearty and impassioned. The best pieces in the volume are the poems devoted to the affections. These are expressions of tenderness, love, grief, and hope, coming from the heart and imagination of a strong man, and their intensity is heightened by their very reserve. They are arrows sent directly to the reader’s heart. We never have been able to wear them out by frequent reperusal, their pathos keeping always its morning freshness and searching sweetness. * * * * * _Poems of Alice and Phœbe Carey. Philadelphia: Moss & Brother. 1 vol. 16mo._