As a young man William Windham cultivated the friend- ship
of Dr. Jolmson, who had known his father. He sat by the bedside of the aged man of genius, lonely then and battling against mortal illness and the fear of death. Boswell was glad to borrow from these diaries, and that is their chief interest, perhaps, to us to-day. But The Early Life and Diaries of William Windham, by Robert Wyndham Ketton-Cremer (Faber and Faber, I5s.), throws an interesting light on eighteenth-century politics. As a statesman, William Windham occupied an important place, and when Pitt, Fox and Burke were dead, he lived on in the glow of an illustrious past. But even the nickname " Weathercock Windham," a popular verdict upon his enigmatic and sensitive character, is forgotten. Such are time's reverses ; the great politician is less interesting to us than the hesitant youth who cheered the last moments of an aged and gruff man of Letters.
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