16 MAY 1868, Page 18

CURRENT LITERATURE.

Memoir of General Lord Lynedoch, G.C.B. By John Murray Gra- ham. (Blackwood.)—All we learn from this book is that Lord Lyne- doch was one of Wellington's Generals, and conducted himself with great bravery and much distinction during the Peninsular war. As the materials for the life seem to have been chiefly drawn from the " Wellington Despatches" and the works of Napier, Gleig, and Alison, this might have been known already. Mr. Murray Graham tells us that "it does not enter into the plan of this memoir to raise the veil of Lord Lynedoch's private life, or quote letters the interest of which is more of a personal than of a public kind." We should have thought that if a man deserved a memoir at all, his life would have been that which most naturally entered into the plan of the memoir, and that a mere record of certain public proceedings by no means answered to that name. However, it is not always easy to understand Mr. Murray Graham. The first sentence in his preface is wholly beyond U3. His -short sketch of Lord Lynedoch's character is good, and there are a few facts in the book of general interest. Such is the account of a carriage being stopped by a highwayman in Park Lane, opposite the Marquis of Hertford's house, and of the personal courage with which Lord Lyne- s:loch, then Mr. Graham, captured the robber. But wo might expect more than one such instance of bravery in a life stretching over ninety- -six years, and held out to us as remarkable.