The Matthew Arnold Birthday Book. Arranged by his Daughter, Eleanor
Arnold. With a Portrait. (Smith, Elder, and Co.)—It is impossible to come across Mr. Matthew Arnold's poetry in any form without pleasure, but we confess that this is the form in which it is least adapted to please us, and for which it is intrinsically least fitted. Mr. Arnold does not describe classes of men sufficiently numerous and various to supply apt quotations for a birthday book, and, little as we like birthday books in any shape, Mr. Arnold's poetry far- shales us with one that is leas satisfactory than any other poet of equal note. The book is excellently got up, and, of course, among Mr. Arnold's sententious sayings some now and then fit closely a speoial character. But the tale of mottoes has to be made up by a good number of quotations which are hardly apt descriptions of any type of human being whatever, and therefore not even suitable for the random guesswork of these birthday books.
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