20 JULY 1929, Page 35

We seem to be in a new age of Elegant

Extracts, and pub- lishers often provide us with a magnificent conspectus of some form of literature. Great Essays of all Nations, edited by Mr. F. H. Pritchard (Harrap, 8s. 6d.), runs to well over a thousand pages. It is a little startling to find Aristotle, Confucius and Nietzsche, St. James and the composers of the Mahabharata all set down among the essayists ; but, as Mr. Pritchard remarks, a wise man will refuse to be enslaved by mere labels." Most of these two hundred authors will read as well by whatever name we call their writings, and in this volume an unusually wide territory of world literature is opened before us.