THE CHURCH TIMES

16 February 1900

(page 187)

REVIEWS.

When, a few months ago, we commended Mr. Aleister Crowley's little volume of verse, entitled Songs of the Spirit, we noted in it a certain immaturity which we hoped might not be so apparent in succeeding volumes from his pen. But Mr. Crowley, encouraged by a measure of success, seems to have hastened to disinter and to present to the world some earlier efforts of his muse. In Jephthah's Vow (Kegan Paul, 7s. 6d.) there is not mere immaturity, but absolute rawness; all the intolerant dogmatism of the undergraduate conjoined with the unconvincing passionateness of a somewhat belated disciple of Swinburne. When Mr. Crowley rants about kings mocking Freedom as she wept, and priests snarling at thought, and of somebody's white star flaming in Europe's horoscope, and of the styes and kennels of priest and king, we can only remember that Mr. Swinburne said all this kind of thing, in somewhat better verse, some thirty or forty years ago, and that it has vanished into the limbo of forgotten verse. Mr. Crowley takes himself too seriously; it is the manner of precocious youth. He is not competent to settle all human problems with a lyric. But, he has a very pretty gift of verse-making, which, after he has completed his apprenticeship to the Muse, we hope that he may still put to worthy use.