bold to say, would have scandalized neither Keats nor Spenser. It was Mr. Howells,--ever as generous in discovering new talent as he is unflinching in reproof of the effeteness of European taste,--who first drew attention to the originality and beauty of Mr. Cawein's poetry. The Kentucky poet had, at that time, published but one tentative volume, the _Blooms of the Berry_, of 1887. This was followed, in 1888, by _The Triumph of Music_, and since then hardly a year has passed without a slender sheaf of verse from Mr. Cawein's garden. Among these (if a single volume is to be indicated), the quality which distinguishes him from all other poets,--the Kentucky flavor, if we may call it so,--is perhaps to be most agreeably detected in _Intimations of the Beautiful_. But it is time that I should leave the American lyrist to make his own appeal, with but one additional word of explanation, namely, that in this introduction Mr. Cawein's narrative poems on medieval themes, and in general his cosmopolitan writings, have been neglected of mention in favor of such nature lyrics as would present him most vividly in his own native landscape, no visitor in spirit to Europe, but at home in that bright and exuberant West-- "Where, in the hazy morning, runs The stony branch that pools and drips, Where red haws and the wild-rose hips Are strewn like pebbles; where the sun's Own gold seems captured by the weeds; To see, through scintillating seeds, The hunters steal with glimmering guns. To stand within the dewy ring Where pale death smites the boneset's blooms, And everlasting's flowers, and plumes Of mint, with aromatic wing! And hear the creek,--whose sobbing seems A wild man murmuring in his dreams,-- And insect violins that sing!" So sweet a voice, so consonant with the music of the singers of past times, heard in a place so fresh and strange, will surely not pass without its welcome from lovers of genuine poetry. EDMUND GOSSE. _London, England._ CONTENTS BLOOMS OF THE BERRY PAGE