"Great, tall, ladies sit on chairs, With rustling dresses, gloves, and furs; "I'm sure you know me, don't you, dear?" When the ladies have all "said their say, the children run away, but the interrupted game" never goes a bit the same after this ordeal. Bad as it is, a worser sometimes happens, and so the children are kept on tenter hooks. "For what we never, never know, When the bell begins to go, Is whether it's the worst of all, And means the dentist's come to call." "He comes flying up the stairs, "What with the dentist and the rest, That on the whole, I'm bound to tell The workmanship of this strikes us as nearly perfect of its kind, perhaps with two exceptions. "To the drawing room door we go" does not run smoothly, and the line " Trembling children perch on chairs" seems suddenly to desert the child's point of view for that of the spectator. The rhyme, too, is rather a repetition of "sit on chairs" in the verse above. If it seems hardly fair to apply these strict tests to such simple verses, we must plead that it is their very excellence which insensibly reminds us of A Child's Garden of Verses, and makes us critical. Stevenson has evidently been the writer's model; she has three verses on reading his Letters. Potatoes," beginning. "I like to watch the gardener dig, he is so old and grave and big," is quite in the Stevensonian manner. 66 Miss Howard is a little prone to moralising; a verse beginning Well, the law of life is progress, and we choose to have it so,” is superfluous in a dainty poem on "My Poplars," trees sacrificed to the inevitable march of that creeping monster-the town. But although her subjects" The Keepsake," "Autumn," "Mystery," Life," are a little wonted, she often invests them with a new idea. From her serious verses we should select "Vale," "Lethe," "Becalmed," for special mention. "September in the Forest presents a vivid picture of the deserted glades of Epping and High Beech when the thousands of summer visitors have departed, and there " leaps forth one last flame of crimson, russet, gold." No one can bring the terrible indictment of a lack of humour against a writer who inscribes verses to “Cabbages,” and apostrophises the vegetable as " Amiable cruciferæ !” Of her excellent philosophy of life three verses on "Shoes" are a capital example. These titles, it may be added, are from "A set of Verses" inspired by the "many things," of which the Walrus opined the time had come to preach. King Monmouth: being a History of the Career of James Scott, "The Protestant Duke," 1649-1685. By ALLAN FEA. Pp. xxxix., 435, 8vo., London (John Lane), 1902. Price 21s. net. This sumptuous volume, containing 14 photogravure portraits and more than 8o other illustrations, offers a most interesting narrative of the handsome and unfortunate Duke from his birth until the " Bloody Assizes of 1685, after his execution. Like The Flight of the King (Charles II.) by the same author, to which it is a kind of sequel, it forms a most fascinating history of that lawless and rebellious period. There is not much which concerns Essex, so far as Monmouth was personally concerned: but his half-sister, Mary Walter, was, by her second marriage in 1676 to William Fanshawe, connected with an old Essex family, he being the eldest son of John Fanshawe, of Parsloes (Dagenham) and nephew of the famous Sir Richard and Lady Anne Fanshawe, of The Memoirs. She was born in 1651, the issue of Lucy Walter, but not by Charles II.-probably by the second Earl Carlingford, who was entrusted with the King's private disbursements to Lucy Walter in Holland. In a curious "Broadside" in the British Museum, we read of a “ A true and wonderful account of a cure of King's Evil by Mrs. Fanshawe, sister to His Grace the Duke of Monmouth," etc. She lived into the reign of William III., and at an audience with Queen Mary received bounty from the Privy Purse. At her death she was buried at Barking, although there is no record in the Registers; but her husband, who, curiously enough, did not inherit Parsloes, lived well into Queen Anne's reign, and at his death in 1707 was interred by the side of his "dearly beloved wife, Mary, sister of the late Duke of Monmouth," at Barking. Monmouth's pocket book, of which an illustration is given, is in the British Museum with an inscription on the flyleaf in James II.'s writing: "This book was found in the Duke of Monmouth's pocket when he was taken, and is most of his owne hand writing." In it he gives, under the head "Casualtys in Henry the Fourth's time," the old story from Hollingshed of the Devil and Danbury (vide E. R. v., p. 182; vi., p. 252). After his last interview (as it turned out) with Charles II. at the erd of November, 1684, Monmouth returned to the Hague viâ Essex, and notes in the pocket book the way from London to East Tilbury. From London to Bow, From Stratford to Barkin, From Barkin to Dagnam [Dagenham] It is eleven miles from London to Dagnam. From Dagnam to Rainham two miles. From Rainham to Wennington one mile. The way that I took when I came from England, December the 10th, 84. I cam on bord a munday night and landed at Neuport [Nieupart, 10 miles S.W. of Ostend] a wensday morning at a leven of the clock. As may be noted, Monmouth's literary attainments were but scanty, his accomplishments lying in a very different direction, in acordance with the gaiety of his nature, and the tone of the Court in those times, where he was ever welcome as a genial and light-hearted companion. The portraits, and indeed the whole of the illustrations, are beautifully rendered, and bring most vividly before us the incidents and scenes of the Duke's life. The two paintings of him by Lely and Wissing in the National Portrait Gallery, are among the reproductions; and at the end of the introduction, mention is given of a three-quarter length picture of the Duke, in the possession of Mr. Walter Crouch, of Wanstead, in whose family it has been for over a century. |