volume appear the "Specimens of the Yorkshire Dialect," consisting of
three songs and two eclogues. Here convention is swept aside; the author
comes face to face with life as he saw it around him in Yorkshire town
and village. We have the song of the peasant girl impatiently awaiting
the country fair at which she is to shine in all the glory of "new cauf
leather shoon" and white stockings, or declaring her intention of
escaping from a mother who "scaulds and flytes" by marrying the
sweetheart who comes courting her on "Setterday neets." What is
interesting to notice in these songs'is the influence of Burns. Browne
has caught something of the Scottish poet's racy vigour, and in his use
of a broken line of refrain in the song, "Ye loit'ring minutes faster
flee," he is employing a metrical device which Burns had used with great
success in his "Holy Fair" and "Halloween." The eclogue, "Awd Daisy," the
theme of which is a Yorkshire farmer's lament for his dead mare, exhibits
that affection for faithful animals which we meet with in Cowper, Burns,
and other poets of the Romantic Revival. In the sincerity of its emotion
it is poles apart from the studied sentimentality of the famous lament
over the dead ass in Sterne's Sentimental Journey; indeed, in spirit it
is much nearer to Burns's "Death of Poor Mailie," though Browne is wholly
lacking in that delicate humour which Burns possesses, and which
overtakes the tenderness of the poem as the lights and shadows overtake
one another among the hills. The other eclogue, " The Invasion," has
something of a topical interest at a time like the present, when England
is once more engaged in war with a continental power; for it was written
when the fear of a French invasion of our shores weighed heavily upon the
people's minds. In the eclogue this danger is earnestly discussed by the
two Yorkshire farmers, Roger and Willie. If the French effect a landing,
Willy has decided to send Mally and the bairns away from the farm, while
he will sharpen his old "lea" (scythe) and remain behind to defend his
homestead. As long as wife and children are safe, he is prepared to lay