C UR RENT LITE RAT UR E.
The Westminster Review. April, 1865.—One does not go for light reading to the review which is issued under the auspices of Messrs. Trubner and Co., but a paper on "The Positive Philosophy of Comte," sixty-eight pages in length, would seem excessive even in The IVestminster, were it not that the initials "J. S. M." at the conclusion warn the reader that the essay before him is not to be judged by ordinary rules. Mr. Mill's writings are never too long, and an estimate by the first of living thinkers of a philosophy which every curate glibly denounces, and not one in a thousand has ever read, has at the present moment a peculiar value. An essay follows maintaining the thesis that the Fourth Gospel is a work of the second century, and assuredly not the writing of St. John. while two other papers on "Codification" and "The Canadian Confede- racy," though worth reading are not likely to be more attractive. There is, however, one very amusing piece of criticism in the number, in which Sir E. Bulwer Lytton's claims to fame are, we think, rightly estimated. He is surpassed by some living writer in every quality of thought or style which goes to the making of a novelist, but though first in nothing, he is a fair second in all. And he would thus occupy a respectable place in literature, if he did not make himself ridiculous by inflated claims to the fame of a great ethical philosopher and poet.
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