"FIRST FRUITS."--BUTLER-THWING

With a modesty at once genuine and in part justified, Mr. Butler-Thwing characterizes his slender volume of Verses and prose Essays as "the sincere, even if badly expressed, life-and-death thoughts of a very young man." The Essays, though competent in style, will hardly outlive the occasion which they originally served. The Verses have somewhat more of significance and distinction. Thoughtful and manifestly sincere, they are the expression of a serious mind which has not yet reached its full maturity. Without sincerity there is no great art, but sincerity alone is not quite the whole story. Mr. Butler-Thwing's poems are marked by delicacy of feeling and a certain just refinement of phrase, but they lack directness of inspiration and first-hand freshness of speech. They are earnest, eager, painstaking and -- traditional. The author has not yet quite released himself from his models,--for a guess, Tennyson in poetry and Pater in the prose. Of the poems, "The Death of Penelope" is by far the longest flight; and it is well sustained. The poet's observation of the scenic world is close and sympathetic, and it is matched by considerable skill of descriptive phrase. Of briefer compass, the lyrics are not without charm, notably, "Weitschmerz," "The Vision of Heart's Delight," and "Laughter and the Rain." The ethical impulse is strong in the author; but it is genuinely striving, not without success, to utter itself in forms of beauty. These verses fall short ultimately not because they are "badly expressed," for they are not; rather the lack is that there is yet much to see and to feel. The poet here has left "room ahead of himself." These are but First Fruits. A later reaping may yield more abundantly.