A Post among " Savages."

Cromwell Argus, Volume III, Issue 156, 15 October 1872, Page 6

A Post among " Savages."

The attention of the Auckland Herald has been drawn to a most amusing extract which appeared in the August number of the Erfccti-c Review, just received from home. Most of our readers have heard of Mr Alfred Domett, a member of the General Assembly since representative institutions came into vogue, until, after having once formed a Ministry himself, he retired from office upon a sinecure in the "wilderness*'of the Native Lands Oiiiee, and now, bilhted on the civil list to the time of some £7OO a year, has returned to bis native country. A very " practical solitude," indeed, Mr Domett has passed in this Colony! As to the ignorance of the writer of the following in the Eclecfi<', we can only ask—" Can such things be ?" : —" Every collect ion of English verse made within the last quarter century has contained a certain poem on the birth of Christ, through which runs the refrain, . In the solemn midnight, Centuries ngo. Thirty-five years ago its author, Alfred Domett, gave a l'oyal entertainment to Ins friends ; left them, leaning on Robert Browning's arm : left him, and vanished. Mainyears after he was seen in a boat, manned bv savages, off the coast of New Zealand, but this was the only glimpse vouchsafed to his friends. He was long a?o given up for dead. Browning's poem of ' Waring' is founded on this strange career. Recently the supposed dead man came back, wearied with wandering, to tell the story of a life spent in ruling the barbarians among whom he had hidden himself from civilisation. He has brought with him the fruit of thirty-five years of practical solitude, in the shape of a poem of 14,000 lines, which is soon to bs«bnblished. Its author's life will be such as no hook ever had bete^'he ' %