18 DECEMBER 1926, Page 26

Current Literature

A YEAR AMONGST THE PERSIANS. By E. G. Browne. With a Memoir by Sir E. Denison Ross. (Cambridge Univer- sity Press. 25s.)---It is good to meet" again a great book in a comely dress, and the Cambridge University Press has done well to give us for five crowns a reissue of Professor Browne's classic, to which Sir E. Denison Ross has added a short but admirable Memoir of the author. Browne's was truly, but for the one year's incursion into the Eastern world, the lanenal semita vitae, but in its placid course wholly charming and lovable. Like many quiet-mannered folk he _maintained adamant opinions on things or policies that seemed to him wrong or unjust—on the Anglo-Russian agreement of 1907 as to the partition of Persia, for instance, and at first he was even opposed to our entry into the Great War. Perhaps some- thing of a crank, but withal a man of vast humanity and winning charm, and one of our very greatest Oriental scholars. His book does for Persia what Fielding's did for Burma : it expresses the soul of a people.