Bridal Bouquet. By Henry Southgate. (Lockwood.)—Here is a volume handsomely
dressed in white and orange-flowers which may be welcomed as a godsend by the friends and kinsfolk of "persons about to marry." Who has not known that despairing search for an appropriate present which begins as soon as the approaching event has been announced ? Of course, if you are near enough and rich enough you may give ten or a hundred pounds' worth of jewellery or plate. But how to spend your modest gold piece in something that shall not look mean and shall have a certain appropriateness ? Here is just the book,—nearly four hundred pages of classical passages about love, which Mr. Southgate has selected from five or six hundred authors, ancient and modern. The only objection to the book that we can see is that after the honeymoon, and what we may call the sub-honeymoon, over which something of the same atmosphere extends, are over one might get a little ashamed of a book with an aspect so pronounced. But then, again, there comes a time when one could bring it out again and feel superior to ridicule. As for any criticism other than descriptive, books of extracts, as we have more than once said before, scarcely admit of it. We may note, however, that the famous, "Faithful—as dog, the lonely shepherd's pride ; Trne—as the helm, the bark's protecting guide ; &c.," is not from Euripides, to whom Mr. Southgate attributes it, but from the Agamemnon of iEschylus, where, in the mouth of the false wife Clytemnestra, it may be meant to have somewhat of an exaggerated tone. The translation, unless we are mistaken, is Dean Milman's.
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