ern Painters'], as Carlyle was the master of Ruskin through life. But Carlyle could no more have done the poetic and artistic work of Ruskin himself than Samson could have composed the Psalms of David." For to Mr. Harrison, besides being a stimulator of men's thoughts, Ruskin is such a master of the difficult and subtle instrument of sonorous prose as was not even Milton or Jeremy Taylor. But Ruskin is always in such a tumult of sympathy, admiration, or warning that he can never clothe his mind in unimpassioned prose. It is this alone, that he does not "prune his words and control the thoughts that o'er him throng," that keeps him from being in achievement as he is in potentiality, the supreme master of English prose. Ruskin could have gained this control had he not lived for something more real to him.

The judgment passed on Arnold is calm and discerning. The critical work is rapidly falling below the poetical in importance for the reason that the criticism is so sound that it has ceased to be questioned and is now a recognized part of our common literary knowledge. In poetry Mr. Harrison compares Arnold with Theognis, the Gnomic poet of Greece, whose thoughts on destiny and life are condensed into poetical aphorisms. Arnold's poetry is serious, full of thought, and, save for defects due to a bad-ear, virtually faultless; but to be faultless is not enough. The truly great poet has not only polish like Theognis but passion like Sappho. When he comes to Arnold's theology, naturally the Positivist finds it hard to understand the devotional sympathy with the Psalms, and the beautiful enthusiasm for the "secret of Jesus" manifested by this man who regarded the personality of God and celestial immortality as without even probable evidence. Indeed, many who are not Positivists and who do not proclaim with so much pride as does Mr. Harrison their allegiance to the Philistines, are unable to grasp Arnold's position.

To us the most valuable essay in the book is the one on Tennyson, because here, after the endless driveling praise

that a "study" on Tennyson has been synonymous with, we have at last a man speaking straight from a thinking mind. Mr. Harrison in his endeavor to be quite fair points out the good before he shows what adverse criticism he has to make. In this present essay, the statement at the beginning that Tennyson's superiority to all poets of the latter half century is above question or doubt is surely itself not above question or doubt. Only rarely is it worth while to discuss the rank of poets so near in time to us as Browning and Tennyson, but with all the latter's exquisite art and with all the former's turgid style, we have found more passion and virility in one page of "Pippa Passes" than in the entire "Idylls." The great popular appeal not only of "In Memoriam" but indeed of all Tennyson's work is due to the fact that his poetry is the expression in exquisite verse of the essentially commonplace beliefs of the larger part of his reading public. Now a great poet is not a translator but a seer. However much one may think Tennyson's influence purer than that of Byron, for instance, it is right always to remember that Byron had an intellectual insight that Tennyson had not. The former brought into the world mind-stirring ideas, the latter touched the hearts of a doubting and sentimental generation. The only national and social causes, says Mr. Harrison, into which Tennyson ever threw his whole soul were the modern fad of imperialism and the glorification of the British arms-causes which go not well with a peer of Milton, but with the Sunday newspaper and a brass band. The characterization of "Lancelot" as a sort of Sir Charles Grandison in plate armor, and the statement that the whole fierce lusty epic of Sir Thomas has been emasculated as if it were to be performed in a drawing room by an academy of young ladies, is not less than felicitous. This comes, too, from a man who has not stinted praise for an ease and music in which Tennyson has been surpassed only by MilG. C. EDWARDS.

ton.

NOTES.

We wish to call special, if belated, attention to the delightful volume of biographical essays collected by Col. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, under the title of "Contemporaries." (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co.) Col. Higginson is always interesting, and his writing has an epigrammatic quality that is much to our taste; but we think that he has rarely given us better work than in this volume. This is partly because he is dealing in the main with that long-vanished New England of the prime of which, with Prof. Charles Eliot Norton and Rev. Edward Everett Hale, he is an honored survivor. His essays on Emerson, on Theodore Parker, on Lydia Maria Child, on John Holmes (brother of the "Autocrat"), and many others, ought to be read by all who are interested in our country's literature and history. The paper on Grant seems to us to have distinct historical value; while that on Sidney Lanier, if somewhat unbalanced in its praise, will serve, for Southern readers, to set off any unpleasant impressions derived from the perusal of the paper describing Col. Higginson's interesting visit to the family of John Brown immediately after the latter's execution. We may notice, by the way, that this volume gives clear proof of the fact that time is softening the prejudices that once alienated the citizens of North and South.

The Macmillan Company has published in the handy and beautiful Temple Series the initial volumes of an Encyclopedia made up of "primers," on various subjects, from South Africa to Dante. The intention is to furnish in an easily accessible form the information usually to be found only in bulky and expensive works of reference. The volumes are forty cents each, and, of course, are sold separately. The paper and binding are good, and the type is clear, though the margins are too narrow for comfort.

H. M. D. Spence, Dean of Gloucester, contributes a readable primer on the English Church, a subject about which many desire to know something, though they have neither the time nor the inclination to attempt the standard works. In the two hundred and fifty pages of this little volume, less some handy tables of dates, and four interesting illustrations, the whole field from 200 A. D. to 1897 is sketched. Dean Spence, of course, writes from the standpoint of a loyal Church of England man, though not a bigoted one; he can sympathize warmly with Laud's efforts to restore a beautiful service, and he can understand, also, that there was justice. as well as cruelty in Laud's end. He seems, however, in his anxiety to show the important part the Celtic Christians played in the conversion of the pagan English, to be slightly disingenuous; the earnestness and zeal of the Roman Catholic missionaries receive hardly a word of mention. There is clearly an overestimate put on the monastery culture and civilization; though a quotation on page 34, from King Alfred, shows that the overestimate is the result of a lack of proportion in this volume and is not real. Dean Spence does not bring out with force enough the animosity which the English Churchmen showed toward the Puritans, certainly with some justification in the Savoy Conference, though with far less at Hampton Court. The style of this little book is rather clerical than literary; Christ is rarely Christ, generally the Crucified," many things are done clearly "under the providence of God," and there is not innocence of the split infinitive.

66

"The Puritan Republic," by Daniel Wait Howe (Indianapolis: Bowen-Merrill Company), tells the stirring story of the early Massachusetts commonwealth in a thorough and sympathetic manner. Mr. Howe is a careful investigator, and his copious footnotes will enable the reader to follow him very closely. Of course what he has narrated herein has often been told before, and will be retold as long as the fortitude, integrity, and piety of the Puritan fathers are loved

and honored; but Mr. Howe, we think, traces the development of republican ideals in the colony with an insight and comprehensiveness rarely surpassed; and we commend his volume to all who wish a faithful picture of early New England social institutions.

D. C. Heath & Co. have added to their series of English classics the required four books of Pope's Homer in an edition by Prof. Paul Shorey, of the University of Chicago. There is a marked tendency among the publishers to put these prescribed readings into the cheapest possible form, and some of them have produced remarkably good books. for twenty-five cents. The Heaths, to be sure, have kept the price of this volume up to the regular price of their series, thirty-five cents, but they have made, so far as mechanical excellence is concerned, one of the most attractive small books we have seen. Besides an engraving of Pope, there are two Homeric maps, Flaxman's spirited headpieces to each book, and several of Friedrich Preller's pictures. As to Dr. Shorey's work, the short introductory essay on Homer is good, and that on Pope gives the necessary information, but the notes are too full of figures and empty of facts. Those notes which themselves give the information needed by the pupil are the best. Grown men hate looking up references, and to boys these barren and mathematical-looking explanations are intolerable and generally useless. notes, therefore, of this edition, and the six fine-print pages of reference in the introduction are likely to secure as careful an ignoring as falls to the lot of most schoolbooks.

The

Four new volumes complete the series of twenty-nine of the American Statesmen Series. These additions all belong to the period of the civil war: Salmon P. Chase, of Ohio, by Prof. Albert Bushnell Hart, of Harvard; Charles Sumner, of Massachusetts, by Moorfield Story, Esq.; Charles Francis Adams, of Massachusetts, by his son, Charles Fran