Stories of Authors' Loves. By Clara E. Laughlin. (Isbister and
Co. 6s.)—These stories are twenty-two in number, all of them, when we have excepted Dante and Michael Angelo, belonging to the nineteenth century. Some of them have not been told, and, indeed, cannot be told, completely ; these it would be better to leave alone. Some, while we probably know all that there is to be known about them, are not worth the telling,—such, we cannot but think, is the story of Keats and Fanny Brawne, one that always makes one think of "after death the ghouls." Some whether happy or unhappy, are normal human experiences which have every right to their place in biography. But we must own that those which may in our view be so described are a minority. Tennyson, Charlotte Brontd, Charles Lamb, the Brownings, Long- fellow, Thackeray, and perhaps we should add the Carlyles, though a perverse fate has attended them, are the only authors among all mentioned in this volume that we care to read about. And, to make a further confession, we could do very well without even these. An author's love or loves have a proper place in his or her biography, where, indeed, the topic must have its place, and where it assumes its right proportion. But to take this subject out of the context as it is taken here—we mean no reflec- tion on Miss Laughlin's method and manner—is not a thing that we like to see done.
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