Contemporary Scottish Verse. Edited by Sir George Douglas. (Walter Scott.)—This
is a very elegant and comprehensive little book. In some 350 closely—perhaps too closely—printed pages it gives "a sample rather than the highly concentrated essence of the Scottish verse of to-day and yesterday." By Scottish verse, how- ever, is not meant necessarily verse written in the Scottish tongue. Indeed, only four of the writers whom Sir George Douglas has sampled, Mr. R. L. Stevenson, Mr. Alexander Anderson, Mr. George MacDonald, and Mr. J. Logie Robertson, can be said to have made any truly serious attempt to use that dialect. As a matter of fact, Sir George Douglas gives a number of selections from Scottish writers of yesterday and to-day, most of whom have written exclusively in English. Thus, Emeritus Professor Blackie, even when he is at his breeziest—for example, when he is singing the praises of Jenny Geddes—does not even attempt so much as to play with the language which one would naturally think he would seek to charm with. It must be allowed, however, that the Scottish writers of to-day, whether they write in English or in the Doric (more or less), make a noteworthy body of poets. They include some writers who are only recently dead, such as Mr. William Bell Scott, and the author of "The City of Dreadful Night ;" and among the living, Mr. Robert Buchanan, the Earl of Soutliesk, Emeritus Professor Blaokie, Mr. George MacDonald, Mr. R L. Stevenson (an excellent portrait of whom forms the frontispiece to the volume), Dr. Walter C. Smith, and that very powerful and promising now writer, Mr. John Davidson. Altogether, this is a
selection which may safely be recommended to all, especially to Englishmen who wish to have a good idea of what living Scottish literature is, and yet shrink from the labour involved in dipping into the volumes in which so many poets—and poetasters—lie buried.
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