BOOKS.
THIS WEEK'S BOOKS.
Tim binders' strike has meant a week of few books. There is not much more than a quarter of the usual output for this time of year. One of the most interesting is Mr. Horatio Brown's Letters and Papers of John Addington Symonds (John Murray). The letters seem of great interest, with the true charm of letters, plenty of information about public events, such as the appearance of the second volume of The Ring and the Book, and plenty about private concerns, such as when he changed house : " the loss of three hundredweights of my favourite books ingeniously selected from the beginnings or ends of editions by the movers."
Sir Walter Raleigh's Laughter from a Cloud (Constable) seems entirely charming. It is made up of little plays, contributions to family magazines, word and question games, a few short stories, and verses, such as the " Ballad of Sir Patrick Spence," written in the eighteenth-century manner. He was a true scholar and a man of a delicate, yet robust, sense of humour.
The Cambridge University Press has issued an important.
looking book by Professor A. S. Eddington on The Mathe. matical Theory of Relativity, a small first draft of which was published in the French edition of Space, Time and Gravi- tation. It is not a book for the lay reader. Mr. Hewlett has published a new collection of essays, Extemporary Essays (Humphrey Milford), among which I am glad to see informal studies of Byron and Shelley, two of his best subjects. Mr. Thomas Nelson Page, who was American Ambassador to Italy, has brought out a book on Dante and his Influence (Chapman and Hall).
There appears to be no poetry of special interest, and no
important novels, though Miss Amber Reeves's Give and Take (Hurst and Blackett) may well prove interesting. It appears to be a political novel about post-War England, and seems to be written with that author's usual rather sardonic humour. Mr. George Renwick's first novel, Up the Hill of Fleet (T. Fisher Unwin), which is about modern journalism, will certainly prove brisk and readable.
Tan LITERAIM Borrou.
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