outside his view, as indeed it is, with perhaps one or two exceptions, outside the view of every well-known writer of our time. Indeed, this pseudo-democracy, this apotheosis by light-headed schoolboys of the 'People, the gray-grown, speechless Christ,' is, unless viewed as a merely poetical exercise, rather disgusting. It is one thing to sing of Socialism, the Socialism of the Italian Unionists, of the French Anti-Imperialists, of the Russian Nihilists: these are for the most part men and women of education, or, in the usual terms, gentlemen and ladies; and the enthusiastic lady or gentleman poet can enter into their point of view; but it is quite another thing to sing of the peasants and mechanics, labourers and trades-unionists, whose aims, whether for ultimate good or evil, are not in the least grasped and understood. This makes it that, of the democracy sung of in these Songs, only that part which has to do with the individuals who are not real democrats can for a moment be viewed seriously.
Let us now take a glance at the Songs themselves. Everywhere in them will be found—and to a really remarkable extent—evidences of the old, the irrepressible, the fatal facility. The poverty of thought in them is terrible. Take such a poem as the 'Hymn of Man.' Not all the prodigality of music and imagery in it can hide the want of real, not to
