27 MAY 1893, Page 25

In the Key of Blue, and other Prose Essays. By

John Addington Symonds. (Elkin Matthews and John Lane.)—The essay which gives a name to this volume is a very ingenious piece of writing by an author whose premature death is a serious loss to the literary world. Who could have imagined that so much could have been made of the hue of a peasant's blue dress in its various com- binations P Descriptions of scenery, always touched with supreme skill; literary criticisms, the most noticeable among them, per- haps, being what Mr. Symonds called" A Study in Zola's Idealism " (" He is an idealist of the purest water "); a lecture on "Culture," 'with other papers, make up the volume, full of excellent work.