Arlo Bates, who has made quite a mark as a novelist, is a man with a strong personality, in conversation almost as cynical as his novels, but a good lover and a good hater. His impressive sonnets are an index to the real earnestness of the man.

Lathrop is the best war poet among all the younger poets on the Northern side, picturesque, impassioned, pathetic. In his "Gettysburg Ode" he soars to the heights of eloquence.

To my mind, the finest work produced among the very young men is J. E. Nesmith's "Monadnoc," the bulk of which I have given. He has written in the style attempted by the pseudo-Nature school, but his work bears the impress of genuine communing with Nature, and thorough gestation and finish. I do not know the age of Daniel Dawson of Philadelphia, but I have seen some very strong poetry by him.

There are poets who should have appeared in this volume, and whom I should have been only too glad to include, such as the third of the Californian triumvirate, Charles Warren Stoddard, whose quality was recognised many years ago by Longfellow in his Poems of Places, and the Southern War poet, James Ryder Randall, whose "Maryland, my Maryland" was one of the most celebrated songs of the War. But nothing has been inserted in this volume without the permission of both author and publisher, and I did not receive replies from these gentlemen until too late to include specimens from their poems.

I have heard much, also, of G. E. Woodberry's "North Shore Watch," but have never been able to see a copy as it was privately printed, and the author away from America.

There is yet one more little knot whom I should

have liked, by extending my limitation, to include, for the British Public does not know them as it does the other members of the Longfellow group-I refer to R. H. Stoddard, Walt Whitman, Thomas Parsons, author of the famous poem on the bust of Dante, H. H. Brownell, the naval war poet, and one or two more.

But they belong to the earlier generation, though the astonishing vitality of Stoddard keeps him still jousting among men twenty years his junior.

Before proceeding to the poetesses, it will be interesting to compare the relative progress of the younger poets of the two branches of Shakespeare's family by giving a list of the English poets who come within the period of this work. The following is a list of those born in the Old Country, after 1830, who are included in Stedman's Victorian Poets, which is perhaps the best authority on contemporary English poetry :

ALGERNON C. SWINBURNE.

ALEXANDER SMITH.

ANDREW LANG.

JEAN INGELOW.

ISA CRAIG KNOX.

CHRISTINA G. ROSSETTI.
AUGUSTA WEBSTER.
SEBASTIAN EVANS.
GEORGE A. SIMCOX.
PHILIP B. MARSTON.
JOHN LEYCESTER WARREN.
JOHN PAYNE.

A. W. E. O'SHAUGHNESSY.
WILLIAM MORRIS.
LEWIS MORRIS.
RICHARD GARNETT.
FREDERICK H. MYERS.
Mrs HAMILTON KING.
GEORGE MEREDITH.
J. A. SYMONDS.

JAMES THOMSON.
EDMUND GOSSE.
WILFRED S. BLUNT.
RICHARD DIXON.
A. M. F. ROBINSON.
C. C. LIDDELL.
THEODORE WATTS.
EDWARD DOWDEN.
WILLIAM WATSON.
P. J. HAMERTON
E. J. LEE HAMILTON.
W. J. DAWSON.
ERNEST MYERS.
EDWARD C. LEFROY.
WALTER H. POLLOCK.
OSCAR WILDE.

To pass on to the poetesses, "H. H.," whom I place at their head, has already been discussed, and I am precluded from discussing Edith M. Thomas and the late Emma Lazarus, because copyright difficulties prevent my laying before my readers adequate specimens to support my remarks. I may say, however, that the general verdict places Miss Thomas very high, if not at the head of the living women poets of America.

Celia Thaxter is unrivalled as a poetess of the sea, and many editions have attested the way in which her genius is recognised by her fellowcountrymen. One of the volumes from which I quote has passed through sixteen.

The poetry of Louise Chandler Moulton is musical, pathetic, delicately finished. She has just that charm which endears "Trefoil" to English readers -a natural singer devoid of poetical artifice or mannerism. I consider her the best woman sonnet-writer.

Next to "H. H." among the poetesses I should place Nora Perry. In spite of unevenness of workmanship, Miss Perry has in a large degree just

that in which recent American poetry seems to me least remarkable-inspiration.

When I read the masterpieces of two brothers, Westward Ho and Geoffrey Hamlyn, when I read The Daughter of Heth or "Edinburgh after Flodden," when I read Cable's best work, or that most tragical tragedy, Juliana Horatia Ewing's Story of a Short Life, I feel the blood tingling at the roots of my hair, the tears welling; I feel their inspiration, and say to myself, "This is genius." But very little of what I have read for this anthology affects me thus. Stedman has brought this thrill in my veins, this mist over my eyes, once, twice, so have Hayne and Ryan and Lathrop with their battle-pieces, so has Hay with a love poem, and Harte with an episode. These are but few, and I don't know that any of them have stirred me "C more than Riding Down." Miss Perry is a New Englander of New Englanders. No one has made the stately figures of the great actors in the Revolution drama rise before us with such a Witch of Endor verisimilitude.

What she has done for her magnificent Wentworths Margaret Junkin Preston has done for the Pilgrims, though without the same fire.

Harriet Prescott Spofford is a born poetess. Not infrequently in her poems, as in "The Lonely Grave," one comes across that rare note of spontaneity.

Edna Dean Proctor's great poem I am unable to quote, as it has not yet been published. This is much to be regretted, as it is on a purely American theme "A Voice from the Zuni Indians," and created quite a furore among the literati when recited in Boston.

Elizabeth Stuart Phelps needs no comment, as she is known all over the world.

Reference has been made above to Ella Wheeler Wilcox. Much ridicule has been levelled at her, and much solid success has fallen to her share. I doubt if any living poetess's books sell like hers. Her publisher told me that he had sold 65,000 copies of Poems of Passion. It is interesting to analyse the sources of her success. It was originally due, undoubtedly, to the amatory reputation of her poems. But she has also a considerable gift of melody can invent a ringing metre, and, choosing her themes from the everyday life of all, has a knack of putting into a pithy line what the average person has been thinking all along but never said. There is a good deal in common, both in the captivating jingle of their lines and in the mother-wit with which they put into apophthegms the philosophy of the life we live, between her and that most successful of Colonial poets, Adam Lindsay Gordon-the Burns of Victoria. I met an ex-drover from Queensland the other day who asked me if I had ever seen her poems, and told me that he thought "they were splendid; they reminded him so much of Gordon's."

Poetry has its genre as well as painting.

I shall close my glance at the contemporary poetry of America with some remarks on four gifted young poetesses who may at any time take a leading position among the women singers of their country, Helen Gray Cone, Danske Dandridge, Louise Imogen Guiney, and Margaret Deland. Of these, so far, Margaret Deland has achieved much the greatest success. Her poems have gone through several editions, while her religious novel, John Ward, Preacher, had quite a phenomenal success.