Some Account of the Life and Works of Hans Holbein,
Painter, of Augsburg. By Ralph Nicholson Wornum. (Chapman and Hall.)— We are doing an injustice to this elaborate work in passing it over with a short notice. Bat Mr. Wornum has left us no choice. However minutely we might study his book and his subject, however carefully we might write on both, we should still be indebted to him for everything we might know, or think, or say. Under such circumstances a review is merely a chapter from the book which it professes to criticize, and iL the book is well done, as Mr. Wornum's is, it should be left to speak for itself. The habit of condensing an original writer's thoughts and dis- coveries into the remarks and inferences of a critic, has been made a melancholy industry by a great journal. Nothing, however, is more unpleasant than the feeling that a writer who can only repeat your phrases presumes to sit in judgment upon you. How a man can be so audacious as to cut you up with your own preface, and to twit you with ignorance of what he has learnt from your pages, passes all literary understanding. Wo shall not treat Mr. Wornum after this fashion. Not having seen all the works of Holbein which he has examined, we cannot venture to question his statement that the Meier Madonna at Dresden is a copy or, at the utmost, a repetition of the same subject at Darmstadt. Nor can we pretend to follow him through the early lives and built-up legends of the painter, or do more than admire the docu- mentary evidence brought forward to rectify misapprehension and to confute error. We might no doubt have read Mr. Wornum's book with more sustained attention had it fulfilled the promise of the second page, and did it not so evidently approach that completeness which its author emphatically disclaims. Whether it will be accepted as " a readable volume on the remarkable career of a remarkable man " is, in these days of hasty and cursory reading, rather a doubtful question. But, on the other hand, it will never subside into a mere book of reference, although, like all standard works, it is made to be consulted rather than skimmed ; and, while the beauty of its engravings and photographs entitles it to rank as the Holbein Gallery, Mr. Wornum is the keeper and secretary.
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