To recommend _Lyre and Lancet_ to readers of _Punch_ is to preach
to the converted, and, as Sir WILLIAM HARCOURT said
when he opened his election campaign in Derby, that is a work of
supererogation. There is, however, this new thing to be said, that
SMITH, ELDER & CO., including the work in their Novel
Series, have presented it in dainty form, and have preserved Mr.
PARTRIDGE'S illustrations. My Baronite has read it through
again with increased admiration for the perilous audacity of the plot,
the skill with which it is worked out, and the many felicities of the
phrasing. It would be so easy to spoil it by a coarse or slovenly
touch. In no scene of the breathless drama does Mr. ANSTEY'S
hand forget its cunning.
The larger number of the verses that make up the little volume
SMITH, ELDER & CO. publish under the title _Tillers of the
Sand_ have, Mr. OWEN SEAMAN states in his preface, appeared
in the _National Observer_. Whilst they are above the average of
the cleverness of that really smart journal, they are tainted by
its besetting sin. Purporting to present "a fitful record of the
ROSEBERY Administration," the recorder finds it all very
bad. This is hard on the late Government, but it is harder still on
the clever versifier. True art requires light and shade, and here is
none. Appearing week by week the pungent admixtures were passable, were
even titillating. But the monotony of vituperation, however cleverly
compounded, grows a little wearisome, even in a volume that does not
much exceed a hundred pages. My Baronite likes best "The Lament of the
Macgregor," not because its literary style is more masterly than that
of its companion verse, but because its fun is less acrid. The rest,
with significant exception of two pieces that appeared in these pages,
is too hotly spiced with ASHMEAD-BARTLETTISM to please one who
looks to Mr. SEAMAN for the wine of scholarly verse and finds
the vinegar of election squibs.