still, and other things. It seems to me I wrote them all in perfect metre.

Specimens of his father's earliest poetic efforts are given by Lord Tennyson at the end of the chapter from which the above extracts are taken, and among them is a scene belonging doubtless to the blank verse drama referred to. Of the matter there is not much more to be said than what always has to be said of a clever boy's first offering to the dramatic muse.

Ha! by St. James,

Mine was no vulgar mind in infancy.

We all know the kind of thing. But the form and technique of the piece will repay a much closer examination. For not only is the metre "perfect" in the sense of observing strict accuracy of scansion, but it is singularly free from the monotonous prosody which usually marks the blank verse of the schoolboy. It is true that he quotes his father as having given him the excellent advice not to "write so rhythmically," but to "break your lines occasionally for the sake of variety." There is much more, however, in these juvenile attempts than a mere occasional breaking of the line; there are signs of an almost mature conception of the importance of a richly varied cæsura. Another of these

pieces, "The Coach of Death," is also remarkable, though on a different ground; for, though crude and formless enough, it does undoubtedly compel some revision of the verdict commonly, and, on the whole, not unjustly pronounced upon Tennyson's first published poetic utterances. But more of this hereafter.

On the school and college career of Tennyson there is little more to be known than has been gathered, either from already published correspondence or from incidental references to it in the Tennysonian poems. His friendships with Spedding (of the "Life of Bacon "), with Monckton Milnes, Brookfield, Charles Buller, and, of course, Arthur Hallam, have long been matter of literary history, and to have preserved the tradition of their talk and symposia and aspirations generally is perhaps the only one among the acts of the Apostles " by which that academical body is at all likely to have preserved its own memory to future generations. Fitzgerald, however, although he did not lay the foundations of his life-long intimacy with Tennyson until the latter had completed the University course, has left an interesting account of this Cambridge coterie which is given in the memoir from his unpublished MS. notes :—

The German school, with Coleridge, Julius Hare, &c., to expound, came to reform all our notions. I remember that Livy and Jeremy Taylor were the greatest poets next to Shakespeare. I am not sure if you were not startled at hearing that Eutropius was the greatest lyric poet except Pindar. You hadn't known he was a poet at all. I remember A. T. quoting Hallam (the great historian) as pronouncing Shakespeare "the greatest man." I thought such dicta rather peremptory for a philosopher. "Well," said A. T.," the man one would perhaps wish to show as a sample of mankind to those in another planet. He used sometimes to quote Milton as the sublimest of poets, and his two similes, one about the "gunpowder ore" and the other about "the fleet," as the grandest of all similes. He thought that " Lycidas was a "touchstone of poetic taste." I don't know how it is, but Dryden always seems greater than he shows -imself to be.

Among new particulars of Tennyson's University days we read of his having been attacked, though apparently in a mild form, by that Spanish revolutionary fever of which John Sterling, as Carlyle tells us, had so much more violent a seizure. In the summer of 1830 he started off for the Pyrenees in the company of Arthur Hallam, with

The

money for the insurgents under the command of Torrijos, and the two young men disappearing from the ken of their friends for several weeks held a secret meeting with the heads of the conspiracy on the Spanish frontier. well-known cloak and sombrero of the poet's later days would have lent themselves admirably to the purpose of such an expedition. Less hot-headed, however, than Sterling's cousin, the unfortunate Boyd, they refrained from any active participation in the revolt, and instead of getting himself shot by a file of Spanish soldiers on the esplanade at Malaga, Tennyson happily returned home with no more compromising document in his pocket than the unfinished MS. of " Enone," the beautiful opening lines of which had been inspired by the scenery of the valley of Cauterets.

There is much in the earlier chapters of the memoir and in the picture of the young poet's domestic life over which one would gladly linger if space permitted. But it is with the story of his literary and artistic career that in therefore, we these columns we are more closely concerned, and to this, cannot much longer delay to pass. Before doing so, however, a word or two must be said on those portions of this memoir in which the twin threads of the biography and of the literary history are of necessity intertwined. Surveyed in this aspect it reveals to us a figure which the countrymen of Tennyson, though they have no doubt formed a correct conception of it, have never yet realized in all the nobility of its true proportions. Generally speaking, of course, they were aware that his early career was beset with pecuniary difficulties. His circumstances stand recorded in fact in his reluctant acceptance of that Civil List pension for which Carlyle, according to the well-known anecdote, only succeeded in enlisting the late Lord Houghton's interest by reminding him that on the Day of Judgment it would not do to lay the blame of the refusal on his constituents, but that it was Richard Milnes himself who would be damned. But few people probably, either then or since, were in a position to estimate the full measure of the poet's needs or the duration and steadiness of the struggle which he had waged with poverty. The death of his father in 1831 left the widow with straitened means. The eldest brother was absent from England; Charles had his clerical duties to attend to; and upon Alfred devolved the care of his mother and unmarried sisters. It was under his superintendence that the household was transferred from Somersby Rectory to High Beech on the borders. of Epping Forest, and finally settled after various migrations at Boxley, near Maidstone. Misfortune, assisted in some measure by imprudence on their own part, if not by dishonesty on that of others, followed their footsteps. A certain Dr. Allen prevailed upon Alfred to invest not only the money for which he had sold a little estate in Lincolnshire, but also a legacy of £500, in an enterprise which seems to have been as unpractical from the commercial point of view as it was artistically unsound. The calamity, indeed, becomes doubly painful to contemplate when we consider its cause. Tennyson, if we are not mistaken, had yet to make the acquaintance of Mr. Ruskin, otherwise it would have given the keenest of pangs to that eminent doctor in æsthetics to find that a personal friend and a poet, promising even then to attain a place among the Immortals, had wrecked his fortune on a scheme for carving oak panels and oak furniture by machinery. "The entire project," writes the present Lord Tennyson, "collapsed; my father's worldly goods were all gone, and a portion of the property of his brothers and sisters. Then followed a season of real hardship and many trials for my

father and mother, since marriage seemed further off than ever." It was, indeed, not till 1850 that the union took place, after an engagement prolonged, through sheer want of the means to marry, over some twelve or fourteen years. The patience with which Tennyson underwent this protracted delay, and the steady courage and perseverance with which he laboured the while to perfect himself in his art, must impress every reader of the simple and matterof-fact narrative in which his son has related the story of this long probation. His father's letters abound with references to "the eternal want of pence," but they are in every instance references of a merely casual and uncomplaining sort. No murmur of dissatisfaction escapes him at the prolonged failure of exceptional and acknowledged poetical genius to earn even a modest competence for its possessor; nor does he ever seem to have shown a moment's wavering of the purpose to which he had dedicated his life. In short, the career of Tennyson, from his twentyfirst to his forty-first year, when the tide of worldly success turned at last in his favour, presents an example of singleminded devotion to a lofty ideal which it would not be easy to match in the history of literature.

To pass now from the region of biography to that of criticism, we find ourselves at once confronted with the inquiry as to how far the memoir, and still more the poetical" documents "now for the first time given to the world, may be regarded as throwing additional light on the development of Tennyson's genius and the advance of his art to that unique perfection which by the consent of even the coldest of his admirers it achieved. A partial answer to this inquiry may at once be given by saying that the hitherto unpublished "juvenilia" do to some extent abate the perplexities of at least one problem long familiar to the Tennysonian student-that, namely, of the truly amazing superiority of the poems of 1830 to those in the "Two Brothers" volume of 1827. The contrast exhibited by these two productions, divided from each other only by this brief interval, has been always, and with reason, regarded as one of the most mysterious of literary phenomena. That contrast, it will be remembered, was one of matter as well as of form; and it is not necessary to assign the various "numbers" of the earlier volume to their respective authors in order to estimate the value of its testimony to Alfred Tennyson's powers, inasmuch as there is nothing to choose between them. Their inferiority is the inferiority, not of the merely crude, but of the hopelessly commonplace. Some critics, striving to shut their ears to that whisper of conscience which tells them that if they had been then "in practice" they could not possibly have detected the touch of the future master in this 'prentice hand, have endeavoured to persuade themselves that it is nevertheless there, and have sought to exhibit it. But it has been a futile effort. There is absolutely nothing, either in the smooth conventionality of their thought or in their feebly imitative style, to explain the stupefying paradox that they were the forerunners by only three years of such a masterpiece of sombre imagination as "Mariana," and by only five years of so rich and splendid a piece of romantic imagery as "The Palace of Art," and above all so matchless a combination of colour and music as " The Lotos Eaters." It must be admitted, however, that in the light of these newly-published pieces the mystery has in one of its two aspects become less mysterious. The greater of the Two Brothers is shown to have done himself injustice by his choice of the poems which he selected for publication. If in his eighteenth year he had nothing in his portfolio less crudely executed than his contributions to the volume of 1827, he had written

at least one poem considerably less commonplace in point of matter at the age of fourteen. Had "The Coach of Death" appeared among the " Poems by Two Brothers " the work of the younger author, at any rate, could never have been pronounced devoid of promise. For, though in its conception "The Coach of Death" no doubt shows traces of the influence of Coleridge, and even traceable reminiscences of "The Ancient Mariner "-though it is throughout unequal in its workmanship and occasionally descends in point of expression to positive bathos-there is a certain power of lurid imagination and a certain vigour of vivid description which could not but have struck the eye of any competent critic of the work of a poet in his teens.

Collected

Private Papers of William Wilberforce. and Edited, with a Preface, by A. M. Wilberforce. With Portraits. 8vo., 285 pp. London, 1897. Fisher Unwin. 12/

The importance of the Diaries of William Wilberforce among the sources of English history during the administration of the younger Pitt has long been recognized. Wilberforce had entered the House of Commons almost at the same time as Pitt; he sat in it during the whole of Pitt's Parliamentary life; he was probably without exception his most intimate and affectionate friend, and, although he was on the whole a steady supporter, he was by no means a blind adherent. Having inherited a considerable fortune, and sitting for the most important county in England, his position in Parliament was one of great independence, and he soon became the leader of the distinctively religious party in the House of Commons, and devoted himself much more to religious and philanthropic questions than to the ordinary topics of party warfare. He has himself mentioned that on the occasion of the second speech which Pitt made in Parliament he voted against him, and he differed from him on more than one considerable question, including the momentous one of the great French War. The fact that Pitt never shared the evangelical sentiments which Wilberforce deemed of all things the most transcendently important; the languor which Pitt showed in the latter period of his administration towards that great question of the abolition of the slave trade to which Wilberforce devoted the best energies of his life; and the sharp conflict that arose between them at the time of the impeachment of Lord Melville-though they did not destroy or seriously weaken the friendship, at least enabled Wilberforce to judge his friend without excessive admiration. It must be added, too, that he was himself a man not only of transparent truthfulness and honesty, but also of no little intellectual power. He does not, it is true, in this respect rank in the first line of his contemporaries; he had a large share of the narrowness of judgment, of the morbid selfconsciousness and exaggerations of feeling, that so frequently characterized the early members of the Evangelical party; but his eloquence, set off by a voice of singular beauty, was heard with pleasure in a House which was accustomed to the speeches of Pitt and Fox, Sheridan and Burke; his social gifts delighted men who had very little sympathy with his opinions; and his letters and journals plainly show that he was no mean judge of character.

The private papers which are now published form an excellent supplement to his well-known biography, and, although they do not contain any revelation of capital importance, they throw many highly interesting side-lights on the events and actors of his time. The most valuable

are some hitherto unpublished letters of Pitt and a very full sketch of his character, which was written by written by Wilberforce in 1821. These papers fully confirm all that has been said of the close intimacy between the two statesmen. In one of the earlier years of their Parliamentary life, Pitt, “who was remarkably fond of sleeping in the country, and would often go out of town for that purpose as late as eleven or twelve o'clock at night," slept

at the house of Wilberforce at Wimbledon for two or three months together.

Seldom (writes Wilberforce) has any man had a better opportunity of knowing another than I have possessed of being thoroughly acquainted with Mr. Pitt. For weeks and months together I have spent hours with him every morning while he was transacting his common business with his secretaries. Hundreds of times probably I have called him out of bed, and have, in short, seen him in every situation and in his most unreserved moments. As he knew I should not ask anything of him, and as he reposed so much confidence in me as to be persuaded that I should never use any information I might obtain from him for any unfair purpose, he talked freely before me of men and things, of actual, meditated, or questionable appointments, plans, projects, and speculations.

The letters of Pitt are in no degree inconsistent with this statement, and they illustrate clearly the simple and affectionate nature which was concealed from the world by a demeanour that in public life was so cold and unbending. The most interesting is that which was written when Wilberforce first announced his great religious change, and when there seemed much danger that the friendship between the two young men might cease. When that friendship had first been formed, the life of Wilberforce, though according to all worldly standards very blameless, had been simply that of a young, popular, wealthy, wellconnected, and intelligent man of fashion, moving in the best society and looking forward to a brilliant political career. He was a member of five clubs, his house at Wimbledon was a great centre of attraction, and his acquaintances included some of the most distinguished men and some of the most charming women of his time. But in 1785 he passed under the influence of a great religious enthusiasm, which was henceforth to give the whole colour to his life. He declared that his former life had not been that of a Christian. He warned Pitt that, although he intended to remain in Parliament, he could no longer be a party man, and he spoke of his desire to retire from the world in a strain which foreshadowed not only an alienation from his old friends, but also the termination of an active and useful career. The wise and beautiful letter which Pitt wrote on this occasion is well worthy of a careful perusal, but a few sentences will give its purport.

I will not disguise to you that few things could go nearer my heart than to find myself differing from you essentially on any great principle. I trust and believe it is a circumstance which can hardly occur, but if it ever should believe

me it is impossible that it should shake the sentiments of affection and friendship which I bear towards you. They are sentiments engraved in my heart, and will never be effaced or weakened. . . You will not suspect me of thinking lightly of any moral or religious motives which guide you. As little will you believe that I think your understanding or judgment easily misled. But forgive me if I caunot help expressing my fear that you are nevertheless deluding yourself into principles which have but too much tendency to counteract your own object and to render your virtues and your talents useless both to yourself and mankind. . . . You confess that the character of religion is not a gloomy one, and that it is not that of an enthusiast. But why, then, this preparation of soli

a mark of your friendship and of the candour which belongs to your mind, to open yourself fully and without reserve to one

who, believe me, does not know how to separate your happiness from his own. The only way in which you can satisfy me is by conversation. If you will open to me fairly the whole state of your mind on these subjects, though I shall venture to state to you fairly the points where I fear we may differ, and to desire you to re-examine your own ideas where I think you are mistaken, I will not importune you with fruitless discussion on any opinion which you have deliberately formed. . . . No principles are the worse for being discussed, and believe me that at all events the full knowledge of the nature and extent of your opinions and intentions will be to me a lasting satisfaction.

In answer to this letter Pitt and Wilberforce had a long interview. As might have been expected, neither convinced the other, but though their governing motives from this time ran in different channels their friendship continued as genuine as before, though it perhaps lost something of its former intimacy. Both Wilberforce and his surroundings had changed. Hannah More and Mrs. Fry soon took the place which had been once held by Mrs. Siddons, Mrs. Crewe, or the brilliant Duchess of Gordon. Religious practices and doctrines dominated over all political interests, and the house at Wimbledon lost much of its attraction to his old friend.

The public questions touched in these letters are not numerous or very important. One letter relates to the candidature of Wilberforce for Yorkshire in 1784, and shows the great pains and the keen interest with which Pitt supported it. In another letter Pitt promised, if necessary, to postpone his motion on Parliamentary Reform for a week or ten days in order that Wilberforce, who was then on the Continent, might be present when it was introduced. In a third he defends his very dubious policy of appointing his brother to the head of the Admiralty, on the ground that this appointment ought to be in the hands of a landsman, and that giving it to a near relation had "the solid advantage of establishing a complete concert with so essential a department and removing all appearance of a separate interest.”

His desire to see peace with France established in 1802 and his belief that the character of Bonaparte would make it impossible for that peace to be permanent are very clearly expressed. The slave trade, as might be expected, often appears in the correspondence, and in the early years of the abolition movement the earnestness of Pitt left nothing to be desired. He appears to have paid some attention though a remarkable passage in the sketch shows that it was not very great-to the recommendations of Wilberforce on questions of Church patronage; but there is no sign that he responded to Wilberforce's ardent entreaty that among the new taxes required for the war should be " a tax on all public diversions of every kind, including card-playing."

The very interesting sketch of Pitt which follows is preceded by a few biographical details which are well known, and, among others, by an account of his first and only visit to the Continent in the autumn of 1783. Wilberforce and Eliot, Pitt's future brother-in-law, were his companions, and their journey extended to Paris, Fontainebleau, and Rheims. The most important part, however, of this sketch is the matured judgment which, 16 years after the death of Pitt, Wilberforce formed of his former friend and his careful analysis of his characteristics. The most re

. . No man ever listened more attentively to what was stated against his own opinions. His regard for truth was greater than I ever saw in any man who was not strongly under the influence of a powerful principle of religion; he appeared to adhere to it out of respect to himself, from a certain moral purity which appeared to be a part of his nature.

In his official intercourse with professional experts or subordinates it was remarked how ready he was to surrender his own pre-conceived opinions if superior expert knowledge convinced him that he was wrong. As Wilberforce. acutely observes, many men would thus change their line of conduct on important occasions, but few would do so. without some fretfulness or irritation on those small occasions" which are not of sufficient moment to call man's dignity into action."

This was a quality of intellect which was closely connected with his moral character. Wilberforce bears emphatic testimony to his unruffled good humour both. in great matters and in small, and to the strongly sympathetic nature that endeared him to those who came in close contact with him. The haughtiness which was so conspicuous in his public life was, he believed, largely due to shyness. "No man appeared to feel more for others when in distress; no man was ever more kind and indulgent to his inferiors and dependants of every class, and never were there any of those little acts of superciliousness or indifference to the feelings and comforts of others by which secret pride is sometimes betrayed." There was not a tinge of jealousy in his nature, and, like Fox, he was always prompt and generous in recognizing rising talent.

Wilberforce did not, however, believe that Pitt had much insight into individual character or much power of foreseeing events. His extremely sanguine temperament, while it freed him from depression in the darkest hours of public affairs, often led him to underrate difficulties and to give too easy credit to information which accorded with his wishes. In the eyes of Wilberforce his capital defect was the absence of any strong religious conviction. This want and his habitual association "with men of worldly ways of thinking and acting" deprived his Government of moral force, induced him to govern by influence rather than by principle, and prevented him from "giving their just weight to religious and moral principles and character in the exercise of his unlimited patronage both in Church

and State."

In comparing his eloquence with that of Fox he makes one somewhat whimsical criticism :

The necessity under which Mr. Pitt often lay of opening and speaking upon subjects of a low and vulgarising quality, such as the excise on tobacco, wine, &c., topics almost incapable with propriety of an association with wit and grace, especially in one who was so utterly devoid of all disposition to seek occasions for shining, tended to produce a real mediocrity of sentiment and a lack of ornament, as well as to increase the impression that such was the nature of his oratory.

The portion of this volume relating to Pitt is that which will especially attract the reader. There are, however, a few miscellaneous letters of some interest. There is one from Lord Ellenborough defending his conduct in accepting a place in the Cabinet at a time when he was Lord Chief Justice of England. There is a long and desponding letter from Windham, giving a deplorable picture of the defenceless state of England in 1803, and of the impossibility of saving London from capture if Bonaparte succeeded in landing 50,000 men upon our shore, and there are some interesting letters of Wellington, in 1814, describing the great jealousy with which French statesmen and French public opinion regarded the English movement for the abolition of the slave trade.

A great portion of the volume consists of home letters chiefly addressed to his son Samuel. They are deeply imbued with religious sentiment of the Evangelical type, and it is curious to observe that an "indisposition to work strenuously appeared to Wilberforce a besetting sin of the son who afterwards became, perhaps, the most indefatigably energetic Bishop of his generation. These letters are almost wholly religious, but there is one, written in 1830, on the effects of University education which is both interesting in itself and a good illustration of the practical wisdom of its writer.

It is curious to observe the effects of the Oxford system in producing on the minds of young men a strong propensity to what may be termed Tory principles. From myself and the general tenour of our family and social circle, it might have been supposed that my children, though adverse to party, would be inclined to adopt Liberal or, so far as would be consistent with party, Whig principles, but all my three Oxonians are strong friends to High Church and King doctrines. The effects I myself have witnessed would certainly induce me, had I to decide on the University to which any young protégé of mine should go, were he by natural temper or any other causes too prone to excess on the Tory side, I should decidly send him to Cambridge, Trinity; were the opposite the case, he should be fixed at Oriel, Oxford.

History of French Literature. By Edward Dowden, D.Litt., LL.D. (Dub.), D.C.L. (Oxon.), LL.D. (Edin.), LL.D. (Princeton), Professor of English Literature in the University of Dublin. (Short Histories of the Literature of the World II. Edited by Edmund Gosse.) 8vo., 444 pp. London, 1897. William Heinemann. 6/

There is no department of letters to which the proverb "Many men many minds " applies better than it does to literary history, and, therefore, from one point of view at least, there can hardly be too many literary histories, though no doubt from other points this is not quite true. It will be strange if any single grouping of so vast a body of facts sets it in finally satisfactory combination; stranger if each new grouping, arranged by a person of knowledge and ability, does not set it in new lights. But, generally speaking, there are two main ways of attacking the problem. The historian may determine to make his own reading and judgment the stones of his edifice, using the collections, views, and opinions of others only as the mortar, and using this mortar sparingly; or he may reverse the process and draw his matter mostly or mainly from others, supplying the connecting stuff himself. The advantages of the former method and its disadvantages are obvious enough, the chief of the disadvantages being that it is a sort of counsel of perfection; he who adopts it can never hope to carry it out even to his own complete satisfaction. The other method-which it would be quite unfair to call

compilation, and which may perhaps best be called intelligent devolution or enrolment of contributors-admits of much more complete carrying out, and may, on its own plan, be relatively perfect.

Professor Dowden, as he explains in his Preface and shows in his book, has chosen a variety of this second course, and we think that he has done wisely. He could not, in about 400 pages of not very small or close print, have given anything like an exhaustive account of his subject on the first plan; on the second he has been able to present an aperçu, arranged and written with the skill of an accomplished literary craftsman, permitting the exclusion of what he did not choose to give, and the presentment at intervals in enlarged scale of portions of the subject which he thought specially important and interesting, and embodying generally the accepted and authoritative views of the day. From the Chanson de Roland to 1850 (the period which he has chosen as at least nominally his terminus) he has unrolled a panorama of his subject sufficiently clear in outline, brightly though not too gaudily coloured, and exhibiting the relations of its different parts in a way which will not draw down upon him the wrath of any prominent specialist. In his general arrangement he has followed the usual, and, indeed (except at the cost of wilful eccentricity), inevitable plan of five books "dealing respectively with the Medieval period, the Sixteenth, Seventeenth, and Eighteenth Centuries, and the last division of all, which he has in his case made to coincide with that from the Revolution to the incoming of Napoleon the Third. In the Medieval period he has avowedly followed the system, and has, we should suppose, confined himself pretty closely to selecting the matter of the large new Encyclopædia of French Literary History of different contributors which M. Petit de Julleville is editing; in the later divisions he has been more eclectic in his discipleship, and has, we should imagine, drawn more on his own reading. As we proceed, too, the enlargements to which we have referred above become more frequent. Even the Chanson de Roland and its hundred companion epics, even the great Arthurian romances lumped together with the Romans d'Aventures, according to the recent French practice, as Epopée Courtoise can be afforded but some half dozen pages each ; even the Romance of the Rose does not tempt Professor Dowden to much expatiation. But the interesting personality, as well as the charming work, of Froissart finds him sympathetic enough, and in the sixteenth century we have excellent sketches of Rabelais and Montaigne. Still, we should imagine that the historian's full interest in his history is not aroused till he comes to the seventeenth, and finds matter which not only appeals to his own sympathies, but has been thoroughly treated and re-treated by those collaborators of his who, as he pleasantly says in the preface, "are on his shelves." There can be no doubt that the best parts of the book (though we should have mentioned the account of the Pléiade as very good) are the extended literary portraits of Corneille and Racine and Molière; of Montesquieu and Voltaire and Diderot; of Madame de Staël, with her inseparable pendant and foil Chateaubriand; of Lamartine and Vigny and Musset, and, above all, Hugo. It is on these that Mr. Dowden has expended the principal outlay of his reading, his critical faculty, and his style; it is these which he has evidently written with the most pleasure to himself and consequently to his readers; and it is by these and by the comparative facility for them which his plan presents that that plan is chiefly justified as a whole.

66

Other parts of the book may suggest some reservations.

It will in these inevitably seem to the most indulgent critic who knows the subject rather insufficiently étoffé, as the French say themselves-insufficiently provided, that is to say, with positive information. This is, we say, inevitable. The smooth sweeping generalizations which the French method loves, and which Professor Dowden has most successfully adopted, accord ill with a profusion of titles and names and dates, of criticisms of individual works, and indications of individual biography and bibliography, except in the case of the greatest masters. To illustrate what we mean let us take the notice of Saint-Evremond. No one would expect much about Saint-Evremond in such a history; the twenty lines: actually accorded to him are liberal, and the characterization they contain is, in the main, just. But let us quote the passage :

The great name of criticism in the second half of the harshly, a soldier, a seventeenth century is Boileau. But one of whom Boileau spoke harshly, a soldier, a man of the world, the friend of Ninon de

L'Enclos, a sceptical epicurean, an amateur in letters, SaintEvremond (1613-1703), among his various writings aided the cause of criticism by the intuition which he had of what was excellent, by a fineness of judgment as far removed from mere licence as from the pedantry of rules. Fallen into disfavour with the King, Saint-Evremond was received into the literary society of London. His criticism is that of a fastidious taste, of balance and moderation guided by tradition yet open to new views if they approved themselves to his culture and good sense. Had his studies been more serious, had his feelings been more generous and ardent, had his moral sense been less shallow, he might have made important contributions to literature. As it was, to be a man of the world was his trade, to be a writer was only an admirable foible.

That is excellently written, and for the most part truly said. It "places," for those who know him, their Saint-Evremond neatly and with hardly any unfairness if with some omission. But will not the hungry sheep look up and say" But what were his various writings'?" "What did he write besides the drama which is elsewhere catalogued?" catalogued?" And it is surely the duty of a literary historian to feed, though not to cram, them with some reply.

Again, though we fully recognize the truth of Mr. Dowden's prefatory remark, " many matters in dispute have here to be briefly stated in one way; there is no room for discussion," we cannot help thinking that especially in the Medieval period he has been rather positive in accepting certain theories and stating them categorically. He must be aware, for instance, that when he writes" Breton harpers wandering through France and England made Celtic themes known through their lais; the fame of King Arthur was spread abroad by these singers and by the history of Geoffrey of Monmouth," he is not merely taking one side of a matter in dispute, not merely basing a sweeping statement on the slenderest evidence, but actually converting a hypothesis into a fact.. A "perhaps," or a "probably," or an "it seems likely that " could not have taken so very much room.

These, however, are the almost inseparable drawbacks: of the method which is nothing if not confident, summary,. and clear, and as Professor Dowden has plainly set forth what his method is and loyally abides by it, there is nothing more to be said.

We need only add, or repeat, in conclusion, that this is a very pleasant book to read, displaying its author's usual care, and for the most part avoiding the "precious-ness of which he has sometimes been accused. Its ornament-whether Professor Dowden borrows, as in the case