BOOKS.
THIS WEEK'S BOOKS. -
THE most interesting book- of the week has a dull title and a depressing format : it is A Survey of the History of Education, by Helen Wodehouse (Arnold). In every period the authoress has found amusing and valuable material not only for the history of education but also for its general theory. Quintilian comes out with much credit, notwithstanding the fate of his ten-year-old son—" when he was- losing his senses and unable to recognize me, he fixed his thoughts in delirium _only On learning." Quifitilian was, for a Roman, surprisingly generous and sweet-spirited, and one _sentence of his reads as thOugh_ written to-day :—" No man should be allowed too much authority over an age so weak and so unable to resist ill- treatment." Oratory was then a part of every child's education, and, as it was persuasion that must be sought, a great deal of practiCal psychology went with it. Some counsels seem now rather ludicrous :—" Of the two modes of producing fear in the judges, the one is common and well- received, when we express concern, for example, that the Roman people may not think unfavourably of them ; or that their priVilege of sitting as judges may not be transferred from them to another body ; but the other is unusual, and violent, when the speaker threatens the judges with a charge of bribery ; a threat which it is certainly safer to address to a larger body of judges than to a small one, for the bad are alarmed and the good pleased, but to a single judge I should never recommend it to be used, unless every other resource has failed." So we continue through the years, with a picture or a quotation to set the atmosphere of each age : the poem of about 1480, for example, "How .the Good Wife Taught Her Daughter," from whose excellent maxims we shall select the warning given to the girl against intemperance :- " For, if thou be oft drunk, it fall thee to shame."
Michael Neo-Palaeologus. : His Grammar, by his father, Stephen N. Palaeologus (Dent), is • too lively for comfort, and that is a pity, for it contains, buried under its high spirits, a quite amazing collection of neat comments on the ways of thought and the ways of life. Particularly sound and-agree- able is the exposure of the tricks and illogicalities by which advertisers prejudice us in favour of their -goods. - Mr. Robert Smillie has written the story of his' career, My Life for Labour (Mills and Boon). " In my young and
callow days," he states, " I was probably a little prejudiced in favour of my own class. . . . But experience teaches, and I now know that a gentleman is a gentleman, whatever his rank in life may be, and may always be trusted to act as such." Captain Berkely has published a rather boisterous
volume of parodies and squibs, Unparliamentary Papers (Cecil Palmer). Mr. Harry Graham's book of light verse, The World We Laugh in (Methuen) contains a great deal of neat absurdity. . The first poem is one of the best ; it ends :- " I rcoillect, in early life,
I loved our local surgeon's wife.
I ate an apple ev'ry day To keep the doctor far away.
Alas ! he was a jealous man And grew suspicious of my plan.
He'd noticed ssv'ral pipe about When taking my appendix out (A circumstance that must arouse Suspicion in the blindest spouse), And, though I squared the thing somehow, I always eat bananas now ! "
What Mr. J. B. Morton's parodies in Tally-Ho (Cecil Palmer) lack in relevance they make up with confidence and gusto.
Three reprints deserve attention : Mr. Basil .Blackwell
sends us The Loves of Dido and Aeneas, a translation by • Sir Richard Fanshawe' of the fourth book of the Aeneid he sends, too, the beautiful Shakespeare Head Press edition of Ovyde : Hys Hooke of Methamorphose, Translated by William Carton ; Messrs. Charles J. Sawyer, Grafton House, London, W. 1, have completed the first volume of The Ocean of Story, C. H. Tawney's translation of the Katha Sarit Sagara, printed
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