25 FEBRUARY 1865, Page 22

Studies in Biography. By Lionel James Trotter. (Edward Moxon and

Co.)—These essays are with three exceptions reprinted from the Dublin University Magazine, and are all reviews of books which have been published within the last six years. They scarcely therehtee deserve the name of "studies," and the anther should hardly have failed to inform his readers what are the sources from which his matter fa almost entirely derived. We do not mean to charge him with anything like concealment, for the essays commonly begin with allusions to "these volumes," as at page 323, which make it quite obvious that the essays are reviews, and the relative pronoun is not always without a substantive to which it can refer. The "studies" are in fact easily-written narratives in which the facts of Robertson's Life of Becket, Lord Stanhope's LO of Pitt, and such books are boiled down into a few pages and mixed up with a certain amount of criticism. Essays of this kind in the hands of Macaulay are among the most interesting of occasional papers, but Captain Trotter has neither the knowledge necessary to illustrate his subjects nor the originalitywhich would give them pungency. He com- monly compares the book he is reviewing with the -beat known previous biography, and be is always sensible, clear, and fluent; but those readers who know very much about the subjects of these "studies" will not find much in them to repay perusal. They would be a capital book to give an intelligent boy.