Anastomosis is facilitated by open vowels, whether at the end or commencement of a word; by confluent consonants, which we may define as two like or homologous consonants in juxtaposition, the one at the end of a word, the other at the beginning of its successor, which have a smoothing effect upon verse; and by semi-confluents, or unlike consonants possessed of confluent properties.

Of this law of anastomosis Professor Sylvester makes this interesting remark in a foot-note on page 45 of his "Laws of Verse:"-" Anastomosis, although little talked about, is no secret, being necessarily familiar to writers of words for song music, and all judicious singing masters, a great part of whose business is to teach the art of keeping back the breath." We have no doubt that the marvellous smoothness in versification of Moore's Melodies in respect of anastomosis is a proof of the justice of the above observation; for in singing the stress of the voice is laid upon vowel sounds, and it becomes therefore necessary for the song-writer to keep his consonants as much as possible in check, and since they are nowhere so apt to accumulate as in the transition of one word to another, special attention ought to be given by him to anastomosis.

We have already indicated our conception of "Chromatic."

Its charm consists in a succession of happily modulated or varied vowel sounds, such modulation or variety depending much for effect upon the relation borne by the consonants that encase them to these sounds themselves and to one another. We believe that a careful study of chromatic would result in the discovery of fixed principles regulating the harmony of sequent tones. Of this department of synectic, as we believe it to be, Professor Sylvester thus eloquently writes" Of course I am not unaware that there is a third source of phonetic beauty in verse (the highest of all), which depends on gradations of tones, on the agreeable succession of allied sounds, in especial, though not exclusively, vowel sounds, has a continuity like that of the colours and tints in the solar spectrum," and produces “a pleasure like that we feel in a sunset, or a rainbow glow and fadeaway in the sky."

Some of the most beautiful and popular lines in Gray and Byron, he adds, owe their chief charm to the prevalence of this element.

From chromatic we lastly turn to a brief consideration of symptosis. Professor Sylvester's subdivision of this branch of his subject into rhymes, assonances (under which he includes alliteration), and clashes, does not quite satisfy us. Admitting these as distinct kinds of symptosis, we would, under correction, submit the following scheme of symptosis to him, explaining as we do so that Scandinavian allitera

tion means "alliteration neither necessarily initial nor final," as Mr. Angus expresses it-as in the example

Mr. Guest has written so exhaustively upon the chiming principles of rhyme and alliteration, that in the present paper we shall not attempt to discuss them, except so far as to observe that assonance seems most easily producible in blank verse, being apt to interfere with as well as to be deprived of its due effect by rhyme. On the subject of clashes very little seems to be known. They are often employed for onomatopoeic purposes, as the passage quoted above from Mr. Guest would hint, but we believe they are usually to be met with at the ends and beginnings of words, so that in the very positions where by the laws of anastomosis and symptosis we should expect to meet assonant and confluent tones, they jar and startle the ear with dissonant and non-confluent ones; as, for example, in the following couplet from Mr. Swinbourne's ode on the "Proclamation of the French Republic "

"Thine own life and creation of thy fate

Thou hast set thine hand to unmake and discreate."

Here a discordant but not the less effective vowel clash upon the a sound is noticeable. This clash is in each produced by an unpleasant though doubtless artistic anticipation of the rhyme sound. Browning's poems carry consonantal clash to a disagreeable excess. Indeed, we have observed that his verse is only too obviously wanting in anastomosis, as indeed it also shows ignorance or disregard of chromatic and chiming principles. From this discursive-and we

feel most imperfect-commentary upon Professor Sylvester's "Principle of Synectic or Phonetic Syzegy," we pass on to his metrical exemplifications of it.

These consist of a translation of the "Tyrrhena Regum Progenies," and part of the ode on Europa of Horace, several translations from the German, and some original poems headed " Anon.," but "dictated by a roving fancy" that we must presume to have been Professor Sylvester's own.

Apart from the syzegetic skill displayed in his translation of Horace's well-known "Invitation to Mæcenas," we cannot refrain from noticing en passant his interesting " Exhibition of the Dichotomous Plan of the Construction of the Ode," which will, we doubt not, be suggestive to the critics of a similar treatment of other classical poems; and from calling attention to his shrewd and original criticism in favour of the use of "ne" in line six of the ode rather than "ut," from a regard to the geographical positions of the three places mentioned in the second verse. His note upon this passage also anticipates Dr. Hake by a most valuable suggestion on the use of synectic.

If a doubtful word or passage in a classical poet who writes harmonious verse is wanting in rhythmical melody, we may reasonably presume it corrupt. More than this, if the corruption has been the result of illegibility, we believe, as we are convinced Professor Sylvester does, that a critic with a good ear and observant eye would be most likely to restore the true reading.

The translation of the above-mentioned ode is in our opinion, both for spirit and closeness to its original, the happiest reproduction in English of an ode of Horace to be met with since the time of Milton. This is high, but we believe well-merited praise. Our author has achieved what would have seemed the well-nigh impossible task of converting sixteen alcaic stanzas, pregnant with fire and freedom, into sixteen verses of alternately rhyming octosyllabics, in which not only the nervous grace, but even the happy word-painting and musical cadence of the master are faithfully reflected. But let our readers judge for themselves in our author's rendering of the four most well-known stanzas of this well-known ode

"Lord of Himself and blest shall prove

He who can boast from day to day
'I've lived to-morrow let high Fove
Black cloud or sunshine, as he may,

"Pour o'er the Pole! what's come and gone
To frustrate, doth defy his power;
Or aught to unshape or make undone,
Once ravished by the flying hour.

"Fortune at work with savage glee

On mocking game, remorseless bent,
Shifts her light favours, now to me,
To another now, beneficent.

"I greet her stay, but if anew

She shakes swift wings, her gifts abjure,

And wrapped in my own virtue woo
Poverty, portionless but pure."

Here, besides reproducing the fine effect of the pause in the middle of line forty-five of the ode, he has most exqusitely reflected the chromatic effect of the word-pictures

and

"Quod fugiens semel hora vexit."

66 Transmutat incertos honores."

"Si celeres quatit pennas."

"Virtute me involvo."

When we turn to his rendering of the story of Europa, we confess ourselves, on the whole, disappointed. His sentences are here too often uneasily turned in the effort to secure concentration of expressionwitness the construction of the third verse of his translation; and to judge our author by his own laws we think there is a neglect throughout these verses of the principle of "anastomosis." Of his translations from the German we most admire his rendering of the “Ideals,” and might we only be allowed to make a substitution of our own for another word which we feel sure must have accidentally slipped into the context, we should be inclined to quote three of its happiest But we see our way to a compromise with the aid of inverted commas

stanzas.

"As when, enamoured of his creature,

Pygmalionclasped' his statue bride,
Till through each pallid marble feature
Sensation poured its flowing tide-

"So I, in fond delirium, often

Wooed Nature with a lover's zest,
Till she, to warm, to breathe, to soften,
Relented on this poet-breast;

"And all its fervid transports meeting,
She who was dumb an utterance found,

Gave back my lips' ecstatic greeting,

And felt my heart's impassioned sound."

We have not space to quote from our author's other translations from the German, much though we should have liked to have given

our readers some extracts from the "Cassandra" and "Castle by the Sea," and others. We cannot, however, regard any of them as approaching the "Ideals" in point of finish; and we observe that they at times are disappointingly unidiomatic in expression, considering the admirable English that Professor Sylvester has shown himself master of, both in the pieces hitherto noticed and also in some vigorous original poems, with a spirited quotation from which we conclude this notice