The Student's Manual of English Literature. By Thomas B. Shaw.
Edited by Dr. W. Smith. (Murray.)--We cannot agree to the editor's remark that the author has succeeded in making his work as little dry as is consistent with accuracy and comprehensiveness. It seems to us a collection of rather wooden criticisms. We very much doubt, moreover, the value of this sort of book for students. They tend to substitute a few pat phrases about a writer for a knowledge of his works, and to enable young lads to talk about him as if they had read him. We are disposed to think that literary criticism should be either given in. the form of notes or else should be so elaborate as to be almost unintelligi- ble, at least uninteresting, to people who have not read the work com- mented on,—except, of course, where the object of the criticism is to give the public some intimation whether a book is likely to suit them, as in newspaper criticism of new publications. But histories of literature ought to deal more with the facts of literature, and the effect which a book produces on its current, than in estimates of the artistic merit of the books themselves.
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