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Whyte-Melville, and is heavier than a Clydesdale after the galloping ballads of the Australian school. Perhaps the fact that such writing has been done so excellently well “over the other side” (of the Tasman Sea) has made it the more difficult for our men.

And though a larger proportion of the people lives outside the towns than in most countries, the group of up-country pieces which has been got together, very sweet and welcome as it seems to be, is unduly meagre. To David McKee Wright, poet, parson, journalist, anthologist, and more, be tribute paid, however, for the heart-calling lines he has written of the stations and the back-blocks.

The life and history of the Maori, again, give a wide field for poetry, which has not been tilled with success as yet. His romance has more than the pathos and soul of the Red Indian, and his long tale of legends of peace and war, lovers and heroes, not less than his quaint and beautiful mythology, is treasure-trove that belongs to the New Zealand poet by the right of the soil. But though many writers have attempted to versify the legends, all have manifestly found them extremely difficult to deal with: the writer who can lead us into Maoridom in verse as Judge Maning leads us in prose is yet to come. Even a suitable medium has hardly been found: with blank verse the barbaric tone of