and Salaga, the frontier town on the main Salaga road being Kirri-kirri, E. long. 1° 34′ (Kippert), and this meridian forms the general western limit. From Kirri-kirri, the southern boundary, roughly speaking, follows the Sabé country north of Dahomey extends a few miles to the north of that parallel, and Ilesha is situated some six miles below it. From Ilesha the boundary trends northwards, and follows the Moshi River to its confluence with the Niger. The result proved satisfactory, though I was at much pains to ascertain by the process of "waiting to see what continual inquiry the limits of Borgu, will happen" is by no means an agree- or Barbar, as it is more commonly able one under such circumstances. called. On the east the kingdom is The robber bands of Borgu, who ap-bounded by the river Niger from the pear to form a very large part of the confluence of the Moshi in the south to population, appeared to have made up the borders of Gurma, a province of their minds that this large caravan, Gandu, iu the north. This province of laden with expensive goods, and de- Gurma, extending approximately along fended by but forty rifles, whose pres- the twelfth parallel of latitude, forms ence was inappreciable in so large a the northern limit of Borgu, which inconcourse, was a godsend which fate cludes the important frontier town of had delivered into their hands. They Illo. On the west the "Gurma road" had seen the beautiful damasks and separates Barbar from Mossi, Gerunsi, shawls, the brocaded satin taborets, and heavily embroidered covers which had formed the presents sent by the company to the kings and chiefs with whom treaties had been concluded. Their imagination filled the boxes of ammunition, the cases of provisions, the ninth parallel of latitude, though the tent loads and paraphernalia of the expedition with similar valuables. A retrospect of the various reports and warnings which reached us from the time we entered Borgu, induces me to think that these marauders had from the first looked upon us as their legitimate prey, only deferring the climax until we should be well in the heart of the country, and anticipating that the king of Nikki would decline to receive us at the capital, and so place us in their power. The lesson their hastily organized band had received at Neeshi taught them caution, and they determined to attack in overwhelming force on the next occasion. The bands, led by various well-known robber chiefs, The horsemen are armed with swords were reported to number from two and lances, but the bow and deadly hundred to six hundred fighting men poisoned arrow is the main weapon of apiece, and I received incontrovertible their armies. Its lightness renders evidence that an extremely powerful them active in thick bush, and its combination had planned an attack noiselessness and the speed with which upon us as we marched out of Ilesha, volleys of arrows can be discharged the most southern and one of the larg- pre-eminently adapt it for the amest of the towns of Borgu. The dense bushes and night attacks in which the six-foot grass and heavy jungle, as yet Borgu delight. The whole nation apunburnt by the annual bush fires of the pears permeated with a passion for Soudan, favored their plan of attack organized plundering. The robber by simultaneous ambushes on various chiefs appear to have little difficulty in points of the mile-long caravan as it recruiting their bands to many hunwound along the narrow jungle path.dreds strong, and small armies of these By a stratagem I avoided them, and freebooters form war-camps throughout entered North Yoruba safely. northern Yoruba for the purpose of The Borgu are a proud and selfimportant race, they are steeped in superstition, and their dread of witchcraft and fetish influences most of the actions of their daily lives. When going to battle or to raid, they festoon themselves and their horses with innumerable charms to render them invulnerable. There are few or no firearms in Borgu. raiding the roads which connect the the contingency of famine. Very exprincipal towns. Colonies of Foulas cellent native cloth is woven in the are settled in separate villages attached country. The Borgu do not appear to to most Borgu towns, but, as I have be much addicted to slave raiding or already said, these people-the con- slave trading. A few slaves pass conquering race of West Africa, from stantly through the country on their whose royal stock the great kings of way from the north and east to the Sokoto, Gandu, Nupé, and Illorin, are southern markets of Yoruba and Illodrawn are but mere slaves in Borgu, rin, but, in contradistinction to the as are also the Yorubas settled in the peoples and tribes who surround them, country. my observation led me to conclude that the Borgu are not a slave raiding people. Cattle and flocks are conspicuous by their absence, and indeed the people are essentially poor in all that constitutes wealth in Africa. This they owe not to the incapacity of their land, but to the lawless bands which keep trade and industry out of the country. Spirits in small quantities have penetrated from Lagos, but the same causes which have impoverished the country have also contributed to keep it practically free from the inroad of firearms and spirits. There are few or no striking physical features in Barbar-land. The country is uniformly level or undulating, with no mountains and but small chains of hills. Geologically the formation consists of masses of ironstone and honeycombed lava impregnated with iron, alternating with surfaces of grey granite. It is sparsely inhabited and thickly wooded with jungle and dwarf forest. Various trees of the Ficus class are cultivated around the villages; the cotton-tree, adansonia, tamarind, and acacia are met with, though not in abundance. The shaa-tree is common, and its "butter" is collected for trade. The "elu" dye plant (Lonchocarpus cyanescens) and a superior tobacco From The Contemporary Review. form, with capsicums, etc., articles of THE POETRY OF KEBLE. trade. The oil-palm and the rubber IT is a difficult matter to criticise a vine appear in the south towards religious poet from a purely literary Yoruba, and become more and more standpoint. There was a curious inplentiful as one travels southwards. stance of this last year. When the There is, however, but little trade in Keats memorial was unveiled at Hampthe country owing to the predatory in- stead, Mr. Gosse spoke some disrestincts of the people; but since the spectful words of Kirke White. There great trade route connecting the com- followed a short, sharp controversy in mercial centres of Kano, etc., in the the Standard on the subject. The deSokoto Empire with the marts of Salaga fenders of Kirke White's position as and Yendi passes through the heart of a poet, based their arguments, as far Borgu from east to west, there is no as I can remember, on the grounds doubt that with an era of security a (1) that he was a good Christian, considerable volume of trade would (2) that he might have been senior pass through Borgu. The imports are wrangler, (3) that he was the victim of principally Kola-nuts, potash, salt, an early death. The facts themselves, brass, and iron, and leatherwork. or rather the facts in combination, may Horses thrive in the country, and are certainly be said to invest Kirke White imported from the north, but both with a romantic interest. Southey, these and donkeys are scarce and ex- indeed, felt this so strongly that he pensive. All the kinds of African wrote a memoir of the young man, and grain are cultivated, but the devasta-edited his Remains. But any one who tions caused by flights of locusts (from the north and north-west) compel the people to rely chiefly on yams against VOL. VII. 319 LIVING AGE. will study Kirke White's poems in themselves, as literature, without prej udice, will inevitably come to the con clusion that they are worthless, and the business of his life, not an over disfigured by every fault that can be laid to the charge of poetry. They are not even promising. They are tedious, grotesque, inharmonious, dull. And yet they have a place in the Aldine edition of British poets. mastering impulse, an imperious need of self-expression. This did not lead to the careful chastening and correcting of his verse that one might expect. There have been poets, in whom the sense of perfection was very strong, like Gray, who worked rarely, slowly, painfully, producing a marvellous, jewelled masterpiece, wrought out touch by touch. But there was nothing of this about Keble; he was copious, fluent, uncritical; he was never fastidious, and allowed much to go out under his name which was quite unworthy of an able man; puerile, inelegant stuff; few, we may say, were ever capable of such extreme flatness as Keble reached in some of the poems in the "Lyra Innocentium ; " such as the compositions entitled "Irreverence in Church," and "Disrespect to Elders," where it is asked that some good angel may wait, "With unseen scourge in hand, on the church path, and by the low school door," in order to "Write in young hearts Thy reverend lore" No one would, of course, dream of classing Keble with Kirke White. Keble was a wise, able, devoted man, narrow-minded, no doubt, and timid in thought, if not in action. Not imaginative nor vivid, but intensely affectionate, dutiful, and reserved; a lover of nature, scenery, friends, children, reflection; somewhat melancholy, no doubt, and not growing in hopefulness as years went by with little independence of thought or character; but reverent, a lover of precedent, and authority, and things established. Altogether a wholesome, valuable man, like Telemachus in Tennyson's Ulysses, of a type of which Englishmen may be proud; but not a man who can be called interesting or romantic in any degree; even Mr. Lock, who has written his life in a lucid style and with very advisable, no doubt, but how pious discretion, would admit that. There is something eminently depressing about Keble's want of personal ambition; no doubt, it was a triumph of grace over nature; but one would have liked the triumph to have been a little more impressive. In the celebrated canvass for the provostship of Oriel, where the decision of Newman and Pusey turned the scale, and gave it to Hawkins rather than Keble, it is evident that Keble was not greatly disappointed; he acquiesced too easily. In some men, this could almost be called indolence, but in Keble we may call it modesty. It argues, however, a certain want of fire, of intensity, and the same is the case with his writings. Keble never lets himself go; he is always checking and controlling the impulse of song. And thus he spoke of his own poetry as a relief from graver thoughts: "Poetic vis medica," the healing power of poetry, he called it; as something to which he could turn to distract and soothe him, but a "parergon" nevertheless, not suggestive of Bumble, and the charity children, and the rod of office! A sense of propriety, we will not say of humor, would have saved such a bathos as this. And It is not, of course, contended that a sense of humor is, in the least, part of the outfit of a poet. Shelley had none, but was rescued from bathos by enthusiasm. Wordsworth had none, and remained great, although he wallowed in bathos. The sense of humor is merely negative in a poet; it does not give a poet sublimity, but it rescues him from puerility and absurdity. so into both of these faults Keble not infrequently fell. In the "Lyra Innocentium" and the "Miscellaneous " poems are many very lamentable verses. In the "Lyra," indeed, there are few that are not lamentable. The fatal blight of the book is that it is occupied throughout, not with what one can learn from children, but with what one can teach them. It upholds an impossible and undesirable ideal for childhood, the ideal of the sainted infant, cheerful, high-principled, de- | Year," and we will say at the outset vout, obedient, but neither natural nor that we do not propose to consider it, child-like. Keble was very fond of except incidentally, from the doctrinal children, but only a childless man and hortatory point of view. We must could have constructed so false a pic- first remember that whatever be its ture. This false note vitiates the merits and demerits, it is a book that whole book; we are conscious of an has achieved a popularity of an absounder-current of rebellion as we read lutely phenomenal kind. It is a book it. We realize that, after all, we do that has been bought and read in Ennot want children to be such as Keble gland as Shakespeare, Bunyan's "Pildescribes them. We do not wish them grim's Progress," and "Robinson to be "prostrate in their sin and Crusoe," and, in America, as the shame," as in the poem of "Absolu- works of Mrs. Beecher Stowe. In 1853 tion" in "Early Encouragements." it was in its forty-second edition, And it is not poetry, whatever it may twenty-five years after its publication. be, to tell a child that The Sunday garment, glittering gay, The Sunday heart will steal away. Even from the religious point of view, the book is pharisaical; it tends to multiply offences, to create a fantastic and elaborate morbidity of conscience fatal to the natural simplicity of childhood, that should be so jealously guarded. The following incident casts a curious light on Keble's taste. On a stray piece of paper still preserved in his writing are the following principles in choosing and correcting hymns: " 66 66 (1) Always use we " instead of "I," or nearly always. (2) Insert as many touches of doctrine as may be. (3) Under every head have at least one ancient or archaic hymn. This is an interesting and characteristic fragment, because it illustrates so well Keble's intense dislike to the personal, the autobiographical element in poetry, that "self-revelation" which is so much in demand at present. Secondly, it shows that he labored under a deep-seated error as to what was and what was not suitable material for poetical treatment. The second principle would be bad enough if it referred to composition, but when it deals with the correction of the hymns of other authors it is unpardonable. The third principle illustrates his reverence for antiquity and tradition. We will now take the "Christian In 1873, when the copyright expired, it had reached the one hundred and fifty-eighth edition, and it is still in demand. For many years it took its place, with High Church people, by the side of the Bible and Prayer-book. It would be incredible, were it not true, that a book of religious poetry, not suitable for public worship, the outcome of a very definite school of thought, should have achieved such a It was undoubtedly what the success. Now, let us first take some of its obvious demerits before we proceed to discuss its merits. In the first place, it is often careless in form and obscure in expression. It was consciously so, and Keble, probably wisely, refused to alter and amend it, imagining that such afterwork often sacrificed some of the freshness of inspiration. It was this carelessness that made Wordsworth, who read it with great admiration, say of it, "It is very good-so good that, if it were mine, I should write it all over again.” The metrical schemes are often complicated and unsatisfactory. Many of the poems are so much too long as to be hardly lyrical. The poems for Advent Sunday, and for the Second Sunday after Trinity, contain between seventy and eighty heroic lines. Then, again, the cyclical instinct which beset Keble, made him provide poems for every event, every service of the Christian year. Thus we have Gunpowder Treason and the Churching of Women celebrated, though it must be owned that these poems have but the slightest connection with the subject. source of the moorland spring, some of With monarchs at their helm. Next and this is a more serious point the poems have been praised for their frequent references to nature and the fidelity of their imagery; after careful study of the "Christian Year" one is compelled to say that this is not deserved; the imagery is of a purely conventional character, and the observation employed of the most general 'Mid reeds and mountain fern, kind. Dean Stanley said, in praise of Nurses her store, with thine to blend? Keble's descriptive passages, that his local and topographical details, when- This is pure conventionalism; the mixever he spoke of the Holy Land, were ture of the reclining nymph and the marvellously clear and accurate. But mountain fern is not felicitous. Constitutional monarchs do not steer their own ironclads, and it is not picturesque even to pretend that they do. It of Hues of the rich unfolding morn, this is not really a compliment. shows that Keble was content to describe without his eye on the object, and relying on the observation The following may stand as instances others; and if the pictures of land- of Keble's failure in precise delineascapes that he had not seen are among tion. In the very first stanza of the his most felicitous passages, we may book we have : well be excused for mistrusting his powers of observation when dealing with the features of his own native country. The fact is that he did not seize upon salient features; Matthew Arnold, in such a poem as the "Scholar Gypsy," brings the Oxford atmosphere, the high, gravelly hills, the deep water-meadows, before the eye; but Keble's landscape is the conventional English landscape, and has no precise definition, no native air. For instance, in the poem for "Trinity Sunday" he says: As travellers on some woodland height, By herds upon an endless plain, Around his path are taught to swell. "Swell" is the property of bulk or sound, surely not of light? Again, addressing the breeze, he says: Wakenest each little leaf to sing. This is purely conventional; how different from the "dry-tongued laurels' pattering talk" of Tennyson. Again: The torrent rill That winds unseen beneath the shaggy fell, How weak a word to end a stanza. The birds of heaven before us fleet, They cannot brook our shame to meet. How falsetto, how prejudiced a tone! And these are not isolated instances: similar infelicities occur on every page. Keble's whole view of nature, it must be said, was onesided and wanting in insight. Nature was to him nothing but a type of mild fervor and uncomplaining patience. "All true, all faultless, all in tune,” he says. To the cruelty, the waste, the ugliness, that seem so inextricably intertwined Again. when Keble is describing the with natural processes, he diligently |