VOL. III.

No. 2.

R

ROBERT BUCHANAN.

OBERT BUCHANAN, born 1841, poet, dramatist, and novelist, is a native of Warwickshire. His father was a well-known socialist lecturer and editor. Mr. Buchanan was educated at Glasgow University, and had for his college companion and intimate friend the ill-fated David Gray. Together the friends and literary aspirants concocted the scheme of leaving Glasgow for London. Gray was to carry with him the inevitable poem the "Luggie," which was to take the world by storm. Buchanan's masterpiece was still in embryo. They set out for the metropolis, without giving warning to their friends, on the same evening, but, owing to a contretemps, by different lines of railway, and arriving at opposite sides of London about the same hour next morning their companionship was for the time interrupted. They shared a bankrupt garret in the New Cut until the consumption to which Gray at last succumbed made his return to Scotland a necessity. He did not live to witness the recognition of his juvenile work. Mr. Buchanan's first book, "Undertones," was published in 1860, and achieved a fair success. It was dedicated to the friend of his youth in a touching poem entitled, "To David in Heaven." In 1865 a volume of “Idyls and Legends of Inverburn" appeared, and a year later Mr. Buchanan scored his first distinct success with "London Poems." The humble life of the great city has rarely been so vividly, so humorously, and so pathetically delineated as in the lyrics of which this volume was composed. Being now fairly and fully launched in the literary life, Mr. Buchanan was producing books with great rapidity. A translation of Danish ballads and a collection of "Wayside Posies" was followed, in 1871, by a lyrical drama, entitled "Napoleon Fallen, a volume of prose essays and sketches brought together from magazines under the title of "The Land of Lorne," and "The Drama of Kings." Mr. Buchanan contributed largely at this time to periodical literature, and one of his essays in the Contemporary Review acquired

some notoriety. This was the essay entitled "The Fleshly School of Poetry." It was of the nature of an attack on the "Poems" of Dante G. Rossetti, published in 1870. Apart from the justice or injustice of the strictures, a bitter controversy arose out of the identity of the critic, who appeared (at his publisher's suggestion) under the pseudonym of "Thomas Maitland." The quarrel, in which Mr. Swinburne became involved, was very protracted, and Mr. Buchanan subsequently retracted some of his charges. Mr. Buchanan had by this time become celebrated as a novelist. His best novels, "The Shadow of the Sword," "God and the Man,' "The New Abelard,” and “Foxglove Manor" are distinguished by rare picturesqueness and vigorous dramatic narrative. As a dramatist, Mr. Buchanan has had some distinct success, the best of his plays being "A Nine Days' Queen," and the most popular "Lady Clare," " Storm-beaten," and "Sophia." He visited America in 1884-85.

L. C. S.

HERMIONE; OR, DIFFERENCES ADJUSTED.

WHEREVER I wander, up and about, This is the puzzle I can't make outBecause I care little for books, no doubt:

I have a wife, and she is wise,

Deep in philosophy, strong in Greek, Spectacles shadow her pretty eyes,

Coteries rustle to hear her speak;

She writes a little-for love, not fame;
Has published a book with a dreary name;
And yet (God bless her!) is mild and meek.
And how I happened to woo and wed

A wife so pretty and wise withal,
Is part of the puzzle that fills my head—
Plagues me at daytime, racks me in bed,

Haunts me and makes me appear so small. The only answer that I can see

Is-I could not have married Hermione

(That is her fine wise name), but she Stooped in her wisdom and married me.

For I am a fellow of no degree,
Given to romping and jollity,

The Latin they thrashed into me at school
The world and its fights have thrashed away;
At figures alone I am no fool,

And in city circles I say my say,
But I am a dunce at twenty-nine,
And the kind of study that I think fine,

Is a chapter of Dickens, a sheet of the Times,
When I lounge, after work, in my easy chair;
Punch for humor and Praed for rhymes,

And the butterfly mots blown here and there By the idle breath of the social air.

A little French is my only gift,
Wherewith at times I can make a shift,
Guessing at meanings to flutter over
A filagree tale in a paper cover.
Hermione, my Hermione!

What could your wisdom perceive in me?

And Hermione, my Hermione!

How does it happen at all that we
Love one another so utterly?

Well, I have a bright-eyed boy or two,

A darling who cries with lung and tongue, about

As fine a fellow, I swear to you,

As ever poet of sentiment sung about! And my lady-wife, with serious eyes,

Brightens and lightens when he is nigh,
And looks, although she is deep and wise,
As foolish and happy as he or I!

And I have the courage just then, you see,
To kiss the lips of Hermione-

Those learned lips that the learned praise-
And to clasp her close as in sillier days;
To talk and joke in a frolic vein,
To tell her my stories of things and men;

And it never strikes me that I'm profane,
For she laughs, and blushes, and kisses again,
And, presto! fly goes her wisdom then!
For boy claps hands and is up on her breast,

Roaring to see her so bright with mirth, And I know she deems me (oh, the jest!) The cleverest fellow on all the earth!

And Hermione, my Hermione,

Nurses her boy and defers to me;

Does not seem to see I'm small

Even to think me a dunce at all!
And wherever I wander, up and about,
Here is the puzzle I can't make out—
That Hermione, my Hermione,

In spite of her Greek and philosophy,
When sporting at night with her boy and me,
Seems sweeter and wiser, I assever-
Sweeter and wiser, and far more clever,
And makes me feel more foolish than ever,
Through her childish, girlish, joyous grace,
And the silly pride in her learned face!

That is the puzzle I can't make out—
Because I care little for books, no doubt;
But the puzzle is pleasant, I know not why;
For whenever I think of it, night or morn,

I thank my God she is wise, and I
The happiest fool that was ever born!

LORD RONALD'S WIFE.

I.

LAST night I tossed upon my bed,
Because I knew that she was dead:
The curtains were white, the pane was blue,
The moon peeped through,

And its eye was red

"I would that my love were awake! I said.

II.

Then I rose and the lamp of silver lit,

And over the carpet lightly stept,

Crept to the door and opened it,

And entered the room where my lady slept;
And the lamplight threw a restless ray,
Over the bed on which she lay,

And sparkled on her golden hair,
Smiled on her lip and melted there,

And I shuddered because she looked so fair;—
For the curtains were white, and the pane was blue,
And the moon looked through,
And its eye was red:

"I will hold her hand, and think," I said.

III.

And at first I could not think at all,

Because her hand was so thin and cold;
The gray light flickered along the wall,
And I seemed to be growing old;

I looked in her face and could not weep,
I hated the sound of mine own deep breath,

Lest it should startle her from the sleep

That seemed too sweet and mild for death.

I heard the far-off clock intone

So slowly, so slowly-
Afar across the courts of stone,

The black hound shook his chain with a moan,
As the village clock chimed slowly, slowly,

slowly,