In the Dozy Hours, and other Papers. By Agnes Repplier.
(Gay and Bird.)—Miss Repplier has made her 'way with a speed to which it would not be easy to find a parallel in recent times, to the front rank of essayists. The sound sense, the mellow wisdom, the touch at once light and firm, which are the charac- teristics of this kind of writing at its best, are hers. In the Dozy Hours is a charming little bit of criticism :—" Miss Austen is likewise [after a notice of Charles Lamb's Letters] the best of midnight friends." "Peacock is too clever" for comfortable assimilation,—that is, in the "dozy hours." Keats among the poets suits such a time ; and Wordsworth in some of his moods ;. and Herrick, who may delight us when our duty is done, for of duty he has little to teach. From literature we pass to cats in "A Kitten," an in-memoriam of 'Agrippina' and Nero.' Then comes a criticism on Novelists; then a paper on Women's Work, under the title of "Ant Cmsar aut Nullns," admirable through- out. Miss Repplier is moved here to speak more strongly than her wont. "Perhaps, oh joyous thought the hour may arrive when women having learnt a few elementary facts about physiology will not deem it an imperative duty to embody them, at once in an unwholesome novel." No one has a better right to speak than Miss Repplier, who has no need to be judged apart from men, and, as it were, by a lower standard. " Humour : English and American," is at least equal to its companion. But it is needless to mention this one or that of these twenty essays. If they have a fault, it is the rarest of all faults,—brevity. Some- thing under twelve pages to each, as an average, is but a scanty allowance.
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