A new poet--and this time a major and not a minor one. On the section called _Love in Dian's Lap_, much might be said of its extraordinary conception and workmanship. The section is one long, beautiful song of praise, and even worship, of one whom the poet calls his "dear administress." But surely never was woman worshipped with more utter chastity of passion. Whether _Before her Portrait in Youth_, or regarding her as _A poet breaking silence_, or only reflecting on her wearing of a new dress, the Poet is so full of fine matter and so adoring in his expression of it, as to bring DANTE himself to mind.--_St. James's Gazette._ Here are dominion--domination over language, and a sincerity as of Robert Burns.... The epithet sublime has been sadly stained and distorted by comic writers, and there is a danger in applying it in its honest light without warning. This safeguard established, we have to say that in our opinion Mr THOMPSON'S poetry at its highest attains a sublimity unsurpassed by any Victorian poet--a sublimity which will stand the hideous test of extracts. In _Her Portrait_ a constant interchange of symbol between earthly and heavenly beauty pulses like day and night.--JOHN DAVIDSON, in _The Speaker_. When at the end of 1893 there appeared a little quarto volume of poems by FRANCIS THOMPSON, the English world of letters experienced an agreeable shock of surprise. It was as if a rocket had been sent up into a dark night. His poems have all the "pomp and prodigality" of imagination for which Gray's frugal muse longed.--_The Spectator._