THE LAST REDOUBT.

ALFRED AUSTIN.

KACELYEVO'S slope still felt

The cannon's bolt and the rifles' pelt;
For a last redoubt up the hill remained,
By the Russ yet held, by the Turk not gained.

Mehemet Ali stroked his beard;

His lips were clenched and his look was weird;
Round him were ranks of his ragged folk,
Their faces blackened with blood and smoke.

"Clear me the Muscovite out!" he cried,
Then the name of "Allah!" echoed wide,
And the rifles were clutched and the bayonets lowered,
And on to the last redoubt they poured.

One fell, and a second quickly stopped
The gap that he left when he reeled and dropped;
The second, a third straight filled his place;
The third,--and a fourth kept up the race.

Many a fez in the mud was crushed,
Many a throat that cheered was hushed,
Many a heart that sought the crest
Found Allah's throne and a houri's breast.

Over their corpses the living sprang,
And the ridge with their musket-rattle rang,
Till the faces that lined the last redoubt
Could see their faces and hear their shout.

1.-LOVE'S BLINDNESS.

NOW

OW do I know that love is blind, for I Can see no beauty on this beateous earth, No life, no light, no hopefulness, no mirth, Pleasure nor purpose, when thou art not nigh. Thy absence exiles sunshine from the sky, Seres Spring's maturity, checks Summer's birth, Leaves linnet's pipe as sad as plover's cry, And makes me in abundance find but dearth. But when thy feet flutter the dark, and thou With orient eyes dawnest on my distress, Suddenly sings a bird on every bough, The heavens expand, the earth grows less and less, The ground is buoyant as the ether now, And all looks lovely in thy loveliness.

II.-LOVE'S WISDOM.

[OW on the summit of Love's topmost peak

Now Kiss we and part; no farther can we go:

And better death than we from high to low
Should dwindle, or decline from strong to weak.
We have found all, there is no more to seek;
All have we proved, no more is there to know;
And time could only tutor us to eke

Our rapture's warmth with custom's afterglow.
We cannot keep at such a height as this;
For even straining souls like ours inhale
But once in life so rarefied a bliss.

What if we lingered till love's breath should fail! Heaven of my Earth! one more celestial kiss, Then down by separate pathways to the Vale.

Richard Garnett.

1835.

RICHARD GARNETT, the son of the Rev. Richard Garnett, was born at Lichfield on the 27th of February, 1835, and was educated privately. At the age of sixteen he entered the British Museum as an assistant in the Printed Book Department, of which he was appointed Keeper at the beginning of 1890. From 1875 to 1884 he had been Superintendent of the Reading Room, and had carried the general catalogue through the press from 1881 until his appointment as Keeper. He retired in 1899, and has since resided at Hampstead. The most important of the numerous remarkable acquisitions made for the Library during his term of office are commemorated in a volume by Messrs. Pollard and Proctor, entitled "Three Hundred Notable Books." In 1883 the University of Edinburgh conferred upon him the degree of LL.D., and he was made a C.B. in 1895.

Mr. Garnett's first book was an anonymous volume entitled "Primula and other Lyrics," the authorship of which was acknowledged in the preface to "Io in Egypt, and other Poems," published in the following year. To 1862 belongs "Poems from the German," to 1869, "Idylls and Epigrams, chiefly from the Greek Anthology," republished as "A Chaplet from the Greek Anthology," in 1892. In 1890 appeared "Iphigenia in Delphi"; in 1896, "One hundred and twenty

four sonnets from Dante, Petrarch, and Camoens," in 1901, "The Queen, and other Sonnets," and in 1904, "William Shakespeare, Pedagogue and Poacher," a drama in blank verse. A short excerpt from this last work is conveniently inserted here:

"SHAKESPEARE.

Sir Thomas, I will stand your friend at Court:
On two conditions, one that presently

You do unclose the path you stopped last Christmas:
Next, that although the noble Earl of Leicester
Your sentence doth annul, yet, by his favour,
Two parts revoked, you amplify the third,
And banish me from Stratford for ten years.

LEICESTER.

What moveth thee to this?

SHAKESPEARE.

My Lady Lucy

Surmiseth shrewdly, so doth Mistress Shakespeare.
And I myself would set division

Between my past and future, signifying

In

The new life to be led. Too long I 've lingered
my dark morning hours, but, now the sun
Of regal favour rises on my path,

Needs must I follow this to glorious noonday,
And then, unto my native place reverting,
Which ne'er was aught but dear to me, or shall be,
There, slowly through the golden hours declining,
Will set in splendour, like the westering sun,
But, unlike him, in the same zone and region
Where origin I had.

LEICESTER.

'Tis nobly spoken,

And know the Earl of Leicester for thy friend,
Not less than her great Majesty, and able
To ope yet wider worlds to thee. The quarrel
'Twixt Spain and England draweth to a head,
And soon the world shall ring with it, and then

The Hollander and we in union vanquish,
Or separate perish. This we know, and soon
The verdant level and the slow canal

Shall bristle with our pikes, throb with our drums,
Stream with our banners, and reverberate
The thunder of our cannon. I shall fill
The regent's seat, and my imperious truncheon
Shall beck thee to my retinue, to gather
Stuff for thy art by practice of the world.
What various shapes shall crowd the tented field!
Soldier and sutler, merchant, peasant, spy;
Captains courageous, English amazons,
Whom deaths of lovers slain most treacherously
Impel to hurl the Dons to Devildom;

Dicer and cut-purse, page, groom, beggar, minstrel ;
Courtesans, fortune-tellers, desperadoes;
Armourers and devisers of strange engines;
And knights too corpulent to fight or fly.
And other matter shalt thou find, arrays
Of marching hosts, pent cities, trenched leaguers,
Sallies, alarms, encounters, skirmishes,
Duels and deaths, and, chief of all, examples
Most noble, in whose brightness thou may st sit,
And as an eagle preen thee in the sun,

Purging all soilure haply gathered here;

For know, my nephew Sidney tends my person,
Mirror of courtesy and chivalry.

The poems of 1859 were republished in 1893 with numerous additions and omissions.

While, however, Dr. Garnett's contributions to poetical literature have been far from voluminous, he has not failed to earn other laurels in other fields. He has shown the width of his poetic sympathy and the extent of his culture in many an elegant translation, especially from the Greek Anthology and the Italian poets; and to his qualities as an editor and anthologist, let the lovers of Shelley, De Quincey, and Coventry Patmore bear witness. He has, moreover, produced some of the best of short biographies, notably that of