As we come down to recent times the task of editing our anthology would grow difficult. In our day, the prose writers have either been coy or copious with their verses. If Professor Tyndall has never essayed the Lydian measure it is very surprising, but we have not yet been admitted to hear his shell; nor has Mr. Walter Besant, to the best of my belief, published an ode to anything. Let the shades of Berkeley and Smollett administer reproof. Until quite lately, however, we should have been contented to close our selection with "The bed was made, the room was fit," from _Travels with a Donkey_. But Mr. Stevenson is now ineligible--he has published books of poems. That this departure is not quite a new one might be surmised by any one who has followed closely the publications of the essayist and novelist whom a better man than I am has called "the most exquisite and original of our day." Though Mr. Stevenson's prose volumes are more than twelve in number, and though he had been thought of essentially as a prose writer, the ivory shoulder of the lyre has peeped out now and then. I do not refer to his early collections of verse, to _Not I, and other Poems_, to _Moral Emblems_, and to _The Graver and the Pen_. (I mention these scarce publications of the Davos press in the hope of rousing wicked passions in the breasts of other collectors, since my own set of them is complete.) These volumes were decidedly occult. A man might build upon them a reputation as a sage, but hardly as a poet. Their stern morality came well from one whose mother's milk has been the _Shorter Catechism;_ they are books which no one can read and not be the better for; but as mere verse, they leave something to be desired. _Non ragionam di lor, ma guarda_, if you happen to be lucky enough to possess them, _e passa_. Where the careful reader has perceived that Mr. Stevenson was likely to become openly a poet has been in snatches of verse published here and there in periodicals, and of a quality too good to be neglected. Nevertheless, the publication of _A Child's Garden of Verses_ (Longmans, 1885) was something of a surprise, and perhaps the new book of grown-up poems, _Underwoods_ (Chatto and Windus, 1887) is more surprising still. There is no doubt about it any longer. Mr. Stevenson is a candidate for the bays.