Leaders in Literature. By P. Wilson, M.A. (Oliphant, Anderson, and
Ferrier, Edinburgh.)—There is a great deal of literary amateurishness in this book. The author speaks too often also as if he were on a higher platform than the eminent writers whom he criticises. Sometimes his tone is patronising to a ludicrous and almost offensive extent, as when he speaks of " poor Arnold." At the same time, Mr. Wilson has evidently read with much care the eight great authors belonging to the nineteenth century of whom he here treats ; one can quite believe his hope that his " studies " may "become to the reader what they have been to himself—a means of intellectual and moral stimulus." They are, indeed, distinctly unequal ; his estimates of Carlyle, Emerson, and Ruskin, perhaps because they are sym- pathetic, are readable, and even useful, while those of Matthew Arnold and Mr. Spencer are distinctly inadequate, and therefore comparatively unprofitable. Mr. Wilson's chapter on Mrs. Brown- ing is not devoid of sound criticism, although it would have been better than it is had there not been manifested in it a tendency to " gush," as in passages like "Now she writes verses soft as the zephyrs, sweet as the sweetest lullaby that ever mother sang to the child upon her knee ; and now she writes verses that have in them the lightning's flash and all the force and rush of the torrent." Mr. Wilson is above all things a careful reader; and he has a genuine love for powerful thoughts powerfully expressed. As a collection of quotations, therefore, this is almost as good a volume of "great thoughts" as has re2ently been published.
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