men," taking every means to ascertain | pened to be Abington fair day. Accord"whether it happened by evil chaunce or ing to Blount's letter, Lady Dudley by villanye." Thus advised, Blount set rose that day very early, and comoff for the scene of action, but his mode manded all her sort (her maid servants) of going about the business was curious. to go to the fair, and would suffer none He did not post directly from Windsor to tarry at home." He adds" that with to Cumnor, but stopped short at Abing- any of her own sort that made reason of don, a small town a few miles distant, tarrying at home, she was very angry." and passed the night at an inn there, And he cites the case of a Mrs. Oding"because," says he, "I was desirous to sells, a widow who lived in the house, hear what news went abroad in the coun- and who seems to have stood upon her try." So, after supper, he proceeded to gentility, "who refused to go that day to "pump" the landlord, and having got the fair, because it was no day for genfrom him the particulars of the accident, tlewomen to go in, but said the morhe endeavored to get from him what the row was much better, and then she would popular feeling on the subject was. "I go. Whereunto my lady answered and asked him by what chance?" He said, said that she might choose and go at her he knew not. "I asked him his judg-pleasure, but all hers should go. They ment and the judgment of the people?" asked her who should keep her company He said some was disposed to say well if they all went? She said Mrs. Owen and say evil. "What is your judgment?" should keep her company at dinner." It said I. "By my troth," said he, "I would thus appear that the suspicious judge it a misfortune, because it chanced circumstance of all servants being absent in that honest gentleman's house (that originated in the wish of Lady Dudley of Anthony Foster). His great honesty herself, and not with Foster; also that doth much cut the evil thoughts of the there were in the building that day Fospeople." When Blount at length reached ter himself, Mrs. Odingsells, and Mrs. Cumnor, he found that a coroner's jury Owen. The next and only fact is that had already been summoned, and on in- during the day-probably on the return quiry, he came to the conclusion that of the servants-the poor lady was found they were as wise and as able men to lying dead at the bottom of a flight of be chosen upon such a matter as any stairs, in the northern part of the buildmen, being but countrymen, as I ever ing, quite remote from her own chamber. saw;" at the same time, they were likely Down these stairs it was alleged that she to "conceal no fault; if any there be, must have fallen. From a letter of Dudthey being, as I hear, part of them, very ley's, it would appear that, after the jury enemies to Anthony Foster." To the had satisfied themselves, one Smith, the jurors Blount conveyed Dudley's special foreman, took the very unusual course of request that they would " earnestly, care-writing to his lordship to inform him, as fully, and truly deal in this matter, to find it as they shall see it fall out." 66 the result, that "it doth plainly appear a very misfortune." In other words a verdict of "accidental death" was returned. This, it might be supposed, would have proved satisfactory to all parties, but it evidently did not set Dudley's mind at ease, for notwithstanding that Arthur Robsart, Mr. Affley, and Blount were on the spot, and probably present at the examination of the witnesses, he wrote subsequently: "Nevertheless, because of my thorough quietness and all others hereafter I am not aware that there exists anything in the form of depositions taken before the jury. Most probably at that period it was deemed sufficient that twelve good men and true should be satisfied as to facts sufficiently to enable them to return their verdict, and the necessity of any records of the evidence taken, or even of the verdict passed, had not been recognized. It is only incidentally, therefore, that we get at the when they have facts proved before them, and these are given their verdict, though it be never quite at variance with the romantic death so plainly found, assuredly I do wish that scene conjured up to give effect to Kenil- another substantial company of honest worth. It appeared that the tragic event men might try again for the mere knowltranspired on a Sunday, which also hap-edge of the truth." The inquiry also failed to satisfy the public mind in the neighborhood, and from time to time versions of the transaction obtained, full of gratuitous horrors, and it is upon these rather than the more legitimately ascertained facts that Sir Walter Scott has based his romance. Now, a few words touching Anthony Foster. We are all familiar with the character Sir Walter has drawn-a combination of the hypocritical puritan and the miser, a fit instrument for any wickedness, a being, in fact, from whom we shrink with loathing. The romancist had no warranty in facts for creating such a character. He was descended from a tolerably good family, received a superior education, married well-being related by marriage to Lord Williams of Thane -and he was possessed of considerable landed property. In 1570 he took his seat in the House of Commons as member for Abingdon. He had by his marriage five children. On his death in 1572 he was buried in Cumnor church, and his tomb of Purbeck marble in the chancel, just in front of the altar, is the chief object of interest in the village. On it he is represented clad in complete armor as an esquire. The inscription on the tomb is in Latin, of which the following is a translation: "Anthony Foster, Esq., the generous offspring of a generous race; Lord of the Manor of Cumnor, Berks; son of Richard Foster, late of Salop, Esq., who had four sons, the latest whereof was Anthony: "In person fair, and of the brightest sense, Where wisdom joined with smoothest elo quence; In action, justice, speech, a flowing grace, mind. Death took too much (what can his power survive?) Yet, spite of death, his fame shall ever live. "Skilled in the softest notes the muses sing; Or on the harp to touch the sounding string; Pleased with the florist's tender nursing care, Or architect stupendous piles to rear. Read in the tongues the ancient sages taught, And learned works confess how well he wrote." With all the allowance reasonably to be made for the license of tombstone eulogy, no one can read these crude lines without feeling the utter impossibility that they ever could have been written upon such a man as the alleged murderer of Amy Robsart. Unquestionably Scott had the authority of tradition, of several old gossipping chroniclers, and of the ballad literature of which he was so fond, for associating Anthony Foster's name. with the tragedy he set himself to describe; but for the dark coloring of the character, as for many of the incidents of his story, he drew so entirely upon his excited imagination, and in so doing violated historic truth so grossly, as thereby to destroy in the minds of even tolerably well informed readers much of the charm which Kenilworth is calculated to produce. W. S. Contemporary Review, RECENT POETRY. BY THE EDITOR. WHATEVER may be the yield of our arable this harvest season, there can be no doubt that the crop of poetry is over the average. It is not so very long since Keats told us that the number of poets was complete, and the roll was in Apollo's hand. Yet since then we have had Tennyson and Browning, and a multitude of lesser names of those who have followed, not unworthily, after their steps: constituting a school of poets and poetesses of this school additions of no mean value which no age need be ashamed. And to are being continually made. Whether in objective descriptive power, or in subjective introspection of thought, the last generation would have striven in vain to match some of those who stand far below the top of our present list. And in mentioning these two qualities, while we have been specifying exactly the defects of the past day, we have indicated tendencies which threaten, if not kept in check, to prove the disease of our own. The minute analysis, on the one hand of outward phenomena, on the other of the processes of thought and feeling, is doubtless good as exercise for the writer's powers; and, if he have those powers in | vigor and under command, may issue in true poetry: but in the absence of vigor, or of judgment, must necessarily degenerate into mediocrity or mannerism. Of each of these alternatives the books be fore us will furnish examples. We will take them on the plan of alphabetical order, and endeavor to give an estimate of them all. BLISS. London: Williams & Norgate. 1866. This is professedly the last work of one who all his lifetime has wooed the Muses. His prologue shall speak for itself. We will criticise by anticipation one expression in the first line, and say that one who wooes the Muses should at least believe for the time in his own deities, and not, while he approaches A Drama. By HENRY them, call them the "fabled nine:" "Once more ye forked hills, ye fabled nine, And glades and fountains, still in verse divine, And life's illusions, summer birds, have fled: First, youth and love their pinions heavenward spread; And now health threatens flight, and with it, worse! "Peace to the rest! But how from thee to part, These lines are evidently the work of a scholarly and cultivated mind. They are of the prize - poem order, and, in that order, above the average merit. The same estimate may serve for the whole drama. Something of its plot may be guessed from the title. The time chosen is the last days of the reign of Nero. In the author's arrangement, the divorce and banishment of Statilia, the accusation and death of Seneca, and the martyrdom of St. Paul, are closely followed by the murder of the monster himself, who has in vain attempted to persuade Thecla to take Statilia's place. The various characters discourse very much as we should expect, in heroic metre, and in faultless, if sometimes sensational language. We have a chorus of Christians, and a chorus of Pagans, who at certain intervals sing lyric odes. Of these we cannot speak highly. Their versification is labored, and, at least in the case of the Christian strains, their matter is but commonplace. We extract the best specimen, which however in its epode labo s, and seems as if, while copying one of the | Lucretius, it had aimed at reproducing the most beautiful and smoothest passages of character of his baldest and roughest: "But in dust when men were grovelling under Superstition's ban, Who her head with scowls distorted thrust from heaven and threatened man, Death is vanquished, and the victory has exalted man to God."—(Pp. 40-2.) Our general estimate of the work may be anticipated. It will please the scholar, as prolusions by a scholar's pen never can fail to do. In some passages its strains rise even to fine writing; but there seems to us to be nothing which can keep "Thecla" in memory, or give it a chance of surviving the first reading. For this, not the author's scholarship or his genius is to blame, but chiefly the utter hopelessness of investing that degenerate time, and the worthless actors in it, with an interest for our day. The only light which can bring it out for our eyes to rest on, is reflected from Christianity: and while we have that shining on us from the Sun in heaven, we do not care to see it reflected in the soiled mirror of semi-pagan fiction. II.-Lyrical Fancies. By S. H. BRAD- Mr. Bradbury has been favorably known before this under the signature here given. But we will confine ourselves to his present work: and will say that there is considerable lyrical merit and power in his "fancies." But he harps too much on one string-Epwra povvov ἤχει. The amount of amorous depiction in the volume is something out of all proportion. We have counted twenty-one separate descriptions of curls falling on shoulders: seven of arms white as marble, etc. Really, in a little volume of two hundred pages, this is somewhat too much. We should advise Mr. Bradbury, in the next edition, to name his book the Cæsariad, or the Bostrychiad, and to recite it for a prize at the next hairdressers' soirée at the Hanover-square Rooms. In one place, we presume by misadventure, the lover declares to his lady that he is— "Heedless of care when clapsing (sic) thee." But we willingly return to praise. Mr. Bradbury really can write charming lyrics. But he wants discipline: lima laborem discretion in the choice of his subin the treatment of them. The leading jects, and somewhat unsparing self-denial poem in his volume, "Lady Vale," is unredeemably absurd. Every line should be erased and forgotten: or such as are spared, worked up in worthier company. We hope to see Mr. Bradbury again under better auspices. Nature furnishes him with abundant material, and he knows how to use it, if he pleases :-but O Mr. Bradbury, beware the curlsἀπέχου τῆς ληκύθου III. ROBERT BUCHANAN'S POEMS.-Un- | feeble tribute of a sentimental wife to her apparently commonplace husband"has managed just to hit the very opposites of Mr. Buchanan's characteristics, both in blank verse and in rhyme. There is much variety of modulation in his blank verse, and a pathetic power, to which the verse of some whom he has made his models is a stranger. He began, in his Undertones, by lavish imitations of Keats; or perhaps we ought rather to say, he threw himself into that peculiar A capital text for a critique on Mr. Buchanan's poems may be found in an amusingly stupid notice in a paper called The Press, inserted, naïvely enough, among the "testimonies" at the end of these volumes: "In the monotonous dulness of his blank verse there is noth-mythological mood of which Keats had ing noticeable, except occasionally a most unpoetic vulgarity. But when he comes to rhyme, Mr. Buchanan is infinitely silly, without the excuse of being musical." We are happy to say that this dullard stands almost alone. The acknowledgment of Mr. Buchanan's genius has been all but universal. But what he saysworthy of the distinguished critic who pronounced In Memoriam to be "the set the example; for there is no servile imitation, but evidently continual remembrance. In the spirited prologue "To David in Heaven," he ranges Keats with Milton, who, however, has had less share in moulding his verse. One specimen only shall be given of this period of his poetry; one which will show alike the beauties and the defects of his versification and imagery. Pygmalion speaks: "As Ocean murmurs when the storm is past Which, melting as the fleecy vapors melt Around the shining cestus of the moon, Made promise of the special shape I loved. Withdrawing back, I gazed. The unshaped stone A small white hand, a little lady hand, The murmurous swarm beneath me, women and men; The coming and the going of the sun: Save when I swoon'd to sleep before the stone, And dream'd, and dreaming saw the perfect shape On the transparent tapestry of sleep."-(Pp. 170-2.) |