BRIEF LITERARY CRITICISMS.
Brief Literary Criticisms. By the late Richard Holt Hutton. Edited by his Niece, Elizabeth M. Roscoe. (Macmillan and Co. 4s. net.)—These essays are "reprinted from the Spectator." No estimate of their value, therefore, can be made in these columns. We may, however, briefly indicate the method followed in them. About a fourth deal generally with some literary subject, such as "The Storing of Literary Power "—"it is the age of reserve which prepares the way for the age of literary power"—" The Use of Paradox," "What is Humour ? " "What is a Lyric ? " The rest are criticisms on books, or sets of books, on Dickens, Keats, Wordsworth, Walter Scott (a speciality of Mr. Hutton), George Eliot, Browning, Matthew Arnold, and, of course, Tennyson. This last is discussed in three essays, but each time in relation to some other writer,—George Eliot, J. H. Newman, and Browning. One of the fifty-two essays is reprinted, not from the Spectator, but from the Economist. This is the notice of Walter Bagehot, which appeared on the Saturday following his death, twenty-nine years ago, short of one week. Possibly in this case we are not bound to the reserve which holds for the rest of the book. But we will be content with quoting one or two aphorisms as illustrating the genius of common-sense which Mr. Hutton so greatly admired in his friend : "A Constitutional statesman is in general a man of common opinions and uncommon abilities." "The most benumb:, ing thing to the intellect is routine ; the most bewildering is dis_ traction ; our system is a distracting routine." "Politicians may appeal to posterity ; but of what use is posterity ? Years before that tribunal comes into life your life will be extinct. It is like a moth going into Chancery."
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