15 DECEMBER 1917, Page 20

Political Portraits. By Charles Whibley. (Macmillan and Co. 7s. Od.

net.)—Mr. Whibley includes in his portrait-gallery Wolsey. Shakespeare as "patriot and Tory "—a designation which is both unhistorical and fantastic—Clarendon, Burnet, Newcastle, Fox, Melbourne, Sir James Graham, Peel and his opponents, and the late Duke of Devonshire, as well as Frederick of Prussia, the Tsar Alexander, Talleyrand, Metternich, and Napoleon. Mr. Whibley's essays are always readable, though they are too often biassed by his inveterate Toryism. In Metternich, however, even Mr. Whibley recognises a kind of super-Tory who ruined himself by his excessive fear of progress.