"However, this masque is readable enough, though Flora and Zephyrus, Oberon and Titania, not much wanted anywhere in the nineteenth century, seem oddly out of place amid 'whippoor-wills,' and 'mockbirds,' and other Yankee nationalities, pleasing and natural as they are in themselves. How did they get into the Alleghanies? By liner or steamer? In the main cabin or the steerage? And were they, were they sea-sick? One would fear it from the unwonted huskiness of their new utterances. "The best thing in the book is 'Semael,' though the plot is neither very apparent nor very novel, the imagery as trite as need be, the blank verse heavy and monotonous, without breaks, grouping, or relief, and the accents as often as not on the prepositions:-- "'_The_ felucca there With lateen-sail, seen _in_ th' horizon-skirt Shaping its course t'ward _the_ Egyptian shore, "(Which Egyptian shore?) "Gives _to_ the moon the silv'ry foam, which breaks "(Could it give the foam _from_ the moon?) "'Gainst _the_ sharp keel, and tracks the wave with light. While just beneath him bounds the lighter skiff With bird-like speed; and darting _to_ the shore, Lowers _its_ white sail, "(Not another bark's, mind!) and moors its painted prow "(Oh, schoolboy's phrase!) "Close _to_ the cliff. Disporting _in_ the sheen.... "And so forth. "And yet this whole passage, and what follows, is really imaginative and picturesque, but spoilt by carelessness, carelessness, carelessness. Either write verses, we say again, or prose. And unless the metre and accent coincide with the sense, and make music when read merely as prose is read, the lines are a makeshift and a failure, and neither worth writing or reading, though they were as fanciful and overloaded as Mr. Browning's, or as grandiloquent and sugary as Mr. ---- Who's?" * * * * *