THE WESTMINSTER REVIEW

London, England

September 1899

(Page 356)

CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE

Poetry.

Jephthah and Other Mysteries, Lyrical and Dramatic. By Alexander [sic] Crowley. London: Kegan Paul, Trübner & Co.

Jephthah and Other Mysteries Lyrical and Dramatic is the title of a volume of verse by Mr. Alexander Crowley. The book is dedicated to Mr. Swinburne, and the dedicatory lines are absurdly and fulsomely flattering. Mr. Swinburne is placed on a pedestal beside Dante, Milton, and Victor Hugo. Mr. Crowley is evidently a hero worshipper. We wish he had selected a better model that the author of Songs before Sunrise. The poems in the volume are, for the most part, weak imitation of Mr. Swinburne’s lyrics, without their music and with all their sins against good taste superadded. The Rape of Death is, perhaps, the best effort in the volume. It is a wild Norse legend told in melodious three-lined verse which, by its very form, produces a weird and lurid impression.